[Anxiety, depression and the pathology of emotion (author's transl)]

Each word in the above title, which has been graciously proposed to us, would need a long description defining its semantic contents at all organizational levels: biochemical, physiological, behavioural, psychological, sociological and so on. We have proposed an overview of the subject which is personal and interdisciplinary, but not exhaustive. We have tried to show why "anxiety" is due to "action inhibition". We have outlined the chief biochemical and neurophysiological, mechanisms which result in action inhibition. We have not entered into the nosological details of depression states. Rather, the clinical forms of depression, their common denominator, at all levels, biochemical, neurophysiological, psychological and sociological, is an outcome of the action inhibition system. We have also insisted upon the crucial role of memory and learning processes in depressive states and have added to this the process of imprinting. Finally, we have mentioned the active and retroactive (feed-back) actions of hormones and polypeptides within the brain, as well as the preferential use, in occidental civilisation, of left hemispheric rather than both, right and left interconnected hemispheric activities.