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Based on Fordham’s theory of the defenses of the primary self, the author develops the hypothesis of a primal anxiety composed of repeated catastrophic early events, experienced by the infant in relation to unformulated suffering in the parent couple, especially grieving. Primal anxiety, characterized by ideas of foreignness and immutability, is an obstacle to the usual evolution of the archetypal program and the capacity for symbolization. Its archaic contents threaten the psychic integrity which the phobia emerges to protect.