[Nonspecific melancholic anxiety].

In this psychopathological study the role of unfathomableness in the experience of anxiety is investigated from semistructured interviews of melancholic (N = 160) and neurotic depressive (N = 93) patients (diagnostic criteria acc. to ICD-9). In melancholic patients groundless anxiety is found as rarely as in the neurotic control group. The patients' reports about their experience of anxiety show that concrete and groundless anxiety are felt as equally unpleasant. Transitional forms between groundless and concrete anxiety can be identified, the frequency of which however, does not contribute to the distinction between melancholic and non-melancholic anxiety. Anxiety with interchangeable content, i.e. anxiety about all and everything (see Kraepelin's pantophobia) is mainly reported by melancholic patients. In contrast anxiety related to concrete situations (phobia) is almost exclusively restricted to neurotic depressive patients. On the one hand the empirical data point to the fact that unfathomableness is a fundamental and typical characteristic of anxiety, on the other hand the importance of unfathomableness in understanding the experience of anxiety in melancholia is stressed.