The emerging of fear from its predecessors further reveals fundamental processes of development. It illustrates especially well the phenomenon of changing mechanisms underlying related affective reactions as they develop and, in particular, the increasing role of meaning. As was the case with the pleasure/joy system, what I will call fear does not exist in the newborn period and yet develops from precursors in early infancy. Moreover, fear, like other emotions, continues to evolve through the toddler period and beyond, with advances in cognitive development. Rather than thinking of fear as something that suddenly appears at a given age, an organizational viewpoint underscores a developmental sequence of qualitative changes, with fear emerging over the course of infancy along with fundamental changes in the basis for emotional arousal.