anxiety **(angst)
** In psychoanalysis, the mental and physical manifestation---or symptom---of either (i) a heightened amount of stimulation (specifically, sexual stimulation) or (ii) the absence or insufficiency of the processes of âworking throughâ or expelling excess excitation. Anxiety is ideational inasmuch as it is always bound to an idea (i.e. a particular image or thought), but it is usually possible to decipher or decode this idea as a sign or substitute for another repressed idea. Anxiety differs from hysteria, which presents in a very similar manner, in that nervous tension is deflected onto a physical object, rather than the psyche. The two pathways are by no means mutually exclusive and they are often seen occurring together. In existentialism, particularly in the work of the Danish theologian SĂžren Kierkegaard, anxiety is an unfocused or objectless fear, such as the fear provoked by freedom---being free to do what one pleases creates the anxiety of not knowing what one wants to do or indeed should do. This theme, the anxiety caused by freedom, is further developed in the work of Heidegger, Martin and Sartre, Jean-Paul.