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It is my belief that the theory of instinctual responses deriving from ethology and advanced in my previous paper permits a new approach. The heart of this theory is that the organism is provided with a repertoire of behaviour patterns, which are bred into it like the features of its anatomy and physiology, and which have become characteristic of its species because of their survival value to the species. Such, it was suggested, are many of the responses characteristic of the family life of Man, namely those mediating relationships between the sexes and between parents and young. This provides an instinct theory having much in common with Freud’s theory of part‐instincts and his notion of the ‘blind’ strivings of the id.

Before applying this theory to separation anxiety as the particular problem under examination, however, it is necessary to review the whole problem of anxiety and fear reactions afresh. In doing so four conditions will be delineated each of which, it is believed, although in essence very different from the others, contributes in a special way to our problem. These are primary anxiety, fright, conditioned anxiety, and expectant anxiety.

In grasping the theory to be advanced it is vital to distinguish sharply between the concept of self‐preservation and that of species survival: probably all biologists would regard the first, when conceived as an ‘instinct of self‐preservation’, as one of the most influential of misleading theories, the second as one of the most pregnant concepts in the history of biology. The notion of an instinct of self‐preservation posits a force or set of forces which is designed to ensure that a particular individual is preserved. The notion of species survival, which stems from evolution theory, points on the other hand to the fact that any biological character which is advantageous to the species tends to be perpetuated (through processes of natural selection and heredity), whilst any that are not so advantageous tend, over the course of generations, to be dropped out. It is true that often what is advantageous for the species is also advantageous for the individual; but there is no guarantee of identity of interest, and where they conflict it can be that it is the interests of the individual which go to the wall. That anatomical and physiological characteristics are subject to this rule has long been recognized. The conspicuous plumage of many birds, which is indispensable to their success in mating, may be most disadvantageous to their safety. The interests of individual survival are sacrificed; the interests of species propagation are paramount. That psychological characteristics are subject to the same law has, thanks largely to the superficial plausibility of the self‐preservation theory, been slow to be appreciated. Yet it is clear that all psychological characteristics which have been developed because of their species survival value must be so subject, and these must include any characteristics to which the term instinctual is applied. For these reasons, in discussing the theory of anxiety and fright reactions, no references will be made to the concept of self‐preservation. Instead we shall be thinking in terms of species‐specific behaviour patterns, or instinctual response systems as I prefer to call them,⁸ which are present because of their survival value to the species and which operate, at least initially, in the blind and automatic way regarded by Freud as characteristic of the id.

In the previous paper I described some of the characteristics of what I termed instinctual response systems which are to be culled from the recent work of ethologists: ‘The basic model for instinctive behaviour is thus a unit comprising a species‐specific behaviour pattern (or instinctual response) governed by two complex mechanisms, one controlling its activation and the other its termination. Although sometimes to be observed active in isolation, in real life it is usual for a number of these responses to be linked together so that adaptive behavioural sequences result.’ I proceeded to consider ‘how as humans we experience the activation in ourselves of an instinctual response system’. When the system is active and free to reach termination, it seems, we experience an urge to action accompanied, as Lorenz (1950) has suggested,⁹ by an emotional state peculiar to each response. There is an emotional experience peculiar to smiling and laughing, another peculiar to weeping, yet another to sexual foreplay, another again to temper. When, however, the response is not free to reach termination, our experience may be very different; we experience tension, unease, anxiety. It is this line of thought I wish to pursue.

The hypothesis advanced is that, whenever an instinctual response system is activated and is unable for any reason to reach termination, a form of anxiety results. The blockage may be of many different kinds. In some cases the environment may fail to provide the terminating conditions, as for example when there is sexual arousal in the absence of an appropriate partner. In other cases two or more instinctual responses may be active but incompatible, for example, attack and escape. In other cases again, the blockage may be associated with fear or guilt, or some deeper inhibition. No doubt the particular form of blockage will influence outcome; here, however, I wish to emphasize only the common feature. No matter what the nature of the blockage, it is postulated, if an instinctual response system is activated and unable to reach termination, changes occur both in behaviour (namely in psychological and physiological functioning) and also in the subjective experience of the individual himself. When it rises above a moderate level it gives rise to the subjective experience of anxiety. To distinguish it from other forms of anxiety I am terming it primary anxiety.

Whether in fact every kind of instinctual response system which is active and unable to reach termination is accompanied by primary anxiety needs further exploration. So too do the behavioural accompaniments of anxiety. Both the physiological and the psychological components seem likely to be in large part unlearnt and thus in some respects to resemble instinctual responses. The psychological components are of course of great consequence for psychoanalysts; since, however, they are intimately related to defence mechanisms, it will be best to postpone a discussion of them until a later paper.

Let us now consider fright. Fright, it is suggested, is the subjective experience accompanying at least two related instinctual response systems – those leading on the one hand to escape behaviour, and on the other to alert immobility or ‘freezing’. It is to be noted that as so defined it does not presuppose any conscious awareness of danger. Instead, it is conceived as being the accompaniment of certain instinctual response systems whenever they are activated. Like all instinctual response systems, those governing escape and ‘freezing’ are conceived as systems built into the organism and perpetuated by heredity because of their survival value. it is possible that there are more than two kinds of instinctual response systems associated with fright, but, since they do not form the subject of this paper, this possibility will not be explored.¹⁰

Unlike some response systems, such as those relating to sexual behaviour which are sometimes activated by purely internal changes, the systems governing escape and ‘freezing’ seem almost invariably to require some external condition for their activation. Amongst those to which they appear to be naturally sensitive are loud noises, sudden visual changes (e.g. fast‐moving objects), extremes of temperature, physical pain, and mere strangeness.¹¹ At this elemental level of instinctual behaviour, the individual does not structure his universe into objects interacting causally to produce situations, some of which are expected to prove dangerous and others harmless. On the contrary, so long as he is operating on this level his responses are rapid and automatic. They may or may not be well adapted to the real situation. The individual flees or remains immobile not because he has any clear awareness of danger but because his flight or ‘freezing’ responses have been activated. It is because the response is automatic and blind that I regard the term ‘fright’ as better than ‘fear’ to denote its subjective accompaniment. (The word ‘fear’, it is suggested in the Appendix, may most conveniently be limited to denote the subjective state accompanying escape and ‘freezing’ whenever the cognitive component of these responses is at a higher level, namely whenever there is a clear conception of what object it is which has activated them.)

Thus far in our analysis primary anxiety and fright, though having in common the character of being automatic and blind, are conceived as very different states. Whereas primary anxiety is the subjective accompaniment of many, perhaps all, instinctual response systems when impeded, fright is the accompaniment of a couple or so of related response systems when activated. In the infancy of many species, however, special conditions operate which lead to a close connectedness between the two which I believe to be of vital importance for understanding separation anxiety. This becomes clear as soon as we examine the situations which terminate escape responses,¹² a matter usually given scant attention.

When the escape response of an animal is activated at only low intensity, mere removal from the activating conditions suffices to terminate it. This is no longer so when it is activated at high intensity. On such occasions in the natural environment animals escape not only from situations but to situations. A frightened rabbit bolts to its burrow, a fox to its earth, a band of baboons to their selected tree. Not until they have reached their preferred haven of safety do they rest. Burrow, earth, and tree are terminating situations, in each case be it noted often limited (on the principle of monotropy)¹³ to a particular burrow, a particular earth and a particular tree (or group of trees). In humans the subjective accompaniment of reaching the haven of safety is a sense of security.

Young animals also escape to a situation. In their case, however, the situation is often not a place but another animal – usually the mother. This is true of individuals of many genera, from fish to primates. The human toddler escapes from a situation which has frightened him to his mother; other primate infants do the same (Harlow & Zimmerman, 1958; Yerkes, 1943). Probably for all, the haven of safety which terminates escape responses and brings a sense of security is proximity to mother.¹⁴

Thus we find that escape responses share with crying, clinging, and following the same terminating situation. The frightened baby, it might be said, is both ‘pushed’ toward his mother by his escape responses and ‘pulled’ toward her by his clinging and following responses. This is a striking conclusion. Primary anxiety, due to the non‐termination of response systems mediating attachment behaviour, and fright, due to the activation of escape responses, are more intimately related than our initial sharp differentiation of them seemed to make likely. The question arises, even, whether the two groups of response system – namely those mediating escape and those mediating attachment behaviour – are really different. May we, instead, be dealing with the activating and terminating ends of a single group of systems? The possibility needs examination.

Reflection suggests that neither view may be adequate. In the first place, as we have seen, escape is closely linked with the very different response system of ‘freezing’. Furthermore the terminating conditions of escape are often different from those of the response systems mediating attachment; thus the mere presence of the individual in a special location, or proximity to a mate, may each prove a haven of safety. Not only is ‘freezing’ very different from the behaviour patterns of crying, clinging, and following, but to be present in a location, if not to be in the proximity of a mate, is very different from the conditions which terminate attachment behaviour. Thus it seems useful for some purposes to distinguish two sets of instinctual response systems. Nevertheless, the discussion serves to show how intricately linked, through the existence of common activating and terminating conditions, these different systems tend to be and how misleading it would be were we to make a sharp division of them into two separate groups. Indeed, the adoption of a theory of instinctual behaviour such as that advocated here enables us to get away from any notion that each ‘instinct’ is entirely distinct from every other. Instead, it provides a flexible conceptual tool which promises to do justice to the complexities of the data.

So far we have been dealing only with those subjective experiences which accompany behaviour that is still at a primitive level. As conceived here, both primary anxiety and fright are the subjective components of instinctual response systems which are activated by certain conditions (part internal and part external, part unlearned and part learned by processes of conditioning) and which operate automatically. Not until the individual can structure his universe in terms of objects existing in time and space and causally related to one another can he develop the notion of a situation which is potentially dangerous. This leads us to differentiate a new class of behaviour with its own characteristic subjective accompaniment: these I shall term respectively avoidance behaviour and expectant anxiety.

As soon as the individual, whether human infant or a member of an infra‐human species, has reached a stage of development in which some degree of foresight is possible, he is able to predict situations as dangerous and to take measures to avoid them. In this he is exercising a far more complex function that is required for instinctual responses and one which Freud habitually attributed to the ego.

At least three sorts of danger situation are distinguishable, though for reasons already given there is some overlap between them. They are:

1 Situations in which the individual believe he is likely to be assailed by external stimuli which he finds (either ‘naturally’ or through learning or both) to be disagreeable and/or noxious and which, if realized, would activate his instinctual response systems of escape and freezing.

2 Situations in which the individual believes he is likely to lose that external condition which terminates his escape responses, namely his haven of safety.

3 Situations in which the individual believes certain of his instinctual responses will be activated without conditions for terminating them being likely to be present. Some such situations are already covered under (a) or (b); an example of one which is not is the prospect of sexual arousal in the absence of conditions for satisfaction.

The anticipation of any of these kinds of situation, and particularly the first two which appear to be the main ones, at once motivates him to take action intended to avoid their developing. Such ‘action’ may be of many kinds and will vary both in regard to the decisiveness with which a plan is made and in regard to whether or not it is actually executed. Irrespective of the mode of action resulting and irrespective, too, of which kind of danger situation is anticipated, the subjective states accompanying anticipation and avoidance appear to be the same: they are those of expectant anxiety.

The division of danger situations into two main classes, namely (a) and (b) above, is consistent with the empirical findings presented in a recent paper by Dixon, de Monchaux and Sandler (1957): a statistical analysis of patients’ fears showed that they tend to cluster into ‘fear of hurt’ and ‘fear of separation’.¹⁵ As these authors point out, moreover, it is consistent with Freud’s distinction between anxieties relating to castration and those associated with loss of object. It will be clear, however, that the two classes I have defined are more inclusive than Freud’s: in the scheme presented here castration anxiety and separation anxiety each represent a particular albeit important example of a broader class. The third class defined above, (c), was the first to be discussed by Freud and is present in his theorizing from 1894 onwards.

It may perhaps be asked why the term ‘anxiety’ has been chosen to denote, in combination with a qualifying word, two such different emotional states as are referred to by ‘primary anxiety’ and ‘expectant anxiety’. There are two reasons. First, as Freud pointed out (1926, p. 165), anxiety carries with it a note of uncertainty. This is true both of primary anxiety, where it is uncertain whether or not the individual will reach a terminating situation, and of expectant anxiety, where the subject is uncertain whether or not he can prevent the danger situation materializing. The second reason is that I believe both classes play a large part in the genesis of neurotic anxiety. A note on questions of terminology, with particular reference to Freud’s usage, will be found in the Appendix.

This is a convenient moment to attempt a summary. We have now differentiated three classes of situation and three classes of behaviour, together with the corresponding subjective accompaniments to which they commonly give rise. The word ‘commonly’ is of importance, since situations can evoke behaviour (and its corresponding subjective experience) only when the organism is in an appropriate state. In the following tabulation the organism is assumed to be in such a state:

Situations	Behaviour	Subjective accompaniment
1. Which activate an instinctual response system without providing for its termination	Persistent activation of response	Primary anxiety
2. Which activate instinctual response systems mediating escape or ‘freezing’	Escape or ’freezing’	Fright
3. Which, if no action is taken, it is anticipated will so develop that
instinctual response systems mediating escape or ‘freezing’ will be activated
the haven of safety will be lostan instinctual response system will be activated in conditions unlikely to provide for its termination	Avoidance	Expectant anxiety

In real life more than one situation may be present at once and behaviour of more than one kind and level result. Thus at the sound of an air‐raid warning each member of a family may experience expectant anxiety in regard to the possibility of harm coming both to themselves and their loved objects and may take precautions accordingly; whilst the whistle of a bomb may excite both escape and clinging responses simultaneously. Although in them the function of foresight, dependent on an appreciation of causal relationships, may be well developed, the example serves to emphasize that the primitive non‐foresightful instinctual responses none the less persist. During the course of development, it seems, we move from a condition in which we possess only the more primitive response systems to a condition in which we are equipped not only with these but also with the capacity for foresightful action. During maturity the extent to which primitive instinctual responses, action based on foresight, or both in combination are likely to mediate our behaviour on a particular occasion is a complex matter. It is one to which I hope to give further attention in a later paper on defences.

Before proceeding to a systematic discussion of separation anxiety, I wish to emphasize afresh that, although we have become caught up in sketching part of a revised theory of anxiety, this is not the purpose of the paper. Our problem is that of trying to understand separation anxiety. Adequately to formulate a comprehensive theory of anxiety would require a broader approach: in particular it would need to give close attention to anxiety arising from the threat of psychic disorganization.