From his early work, Freud devoted himself to the issue of anguish, which is the theme of this work. His theory on this affect, however, was being subjected to a series of reviews. A constant discussion between anguish and an unrepresentable excess that pervades the subject seem to be around this study. In order to establish the basis of this reading, we have examined some important texts from Freud and Lacan, pointing out what we have found there to testify in favor of the hypothesis of an approach between anguish and excess, which Freud later articulated as the beyond the pleasure principle and what Lacan called jouissance. In the last and final freudian elaboration about the anguish, it was considered a sign of danger, as a risk of returning to a psychic state of helplessness. Lacan formulates this danger as the object a, the object of anguish. The relation of the anguish to an object, far from being established from the outset, was being made from the indication of the real nature of this experience, something unnamable and ungraspable by the theory of repression, but that, on the other hand, represented something up against which we should be anguished. Despite the increasing medicalization and the offers of quick solutions to ease the anguish, the contemporary clinic has shown that this issue is far from losing its relevance. Although, its current manifestations have been presenting the anguish in a much more traumatic way than in its function of defense. Instead of the classical phobias, there are panic attacks without explanation. We are going to see how the approach of anguish as an experience wich testifies the dimension of the real can contribute to the contemporary clinic, especially in relation to panic.