After more than 20 years of virtual monopoly of the anxiolytic market, benzodiazepines had become synonymous with anxiolytics. This was true not only clinically but also in animal testing where most tests were optimized for benzodiazepines. The simultaneous realization of their dependence-producing potential and their anxiolytic properties suddenly opened up the field of anxiety research, leading to an explosion of activity in all areas from the most fundamental research to drug development. This fourth volume in the Pierre Fabre monograph series attempts to convey this explosion of interest and activity, bringing together a series of chapters covering most of the new ideas in this area of intense research activity. The symposium on which this book is based took place in Castres in South-West France in April 1990 and was sponsored by the Pierre Fabre Research Centre.