Posted by med_empowered on September 13, 2005, at 13:27:27
In reply to Re: What exactly is nuerosis » rjlockhart98, posted by fires on September 13, 2005, at 11:32:15
hi! "Neurosis" basically means you're "off"; not psychotic or anything, just...troubled. Its a really mushy term, and I think you should be suspicious of doctors who use it. Basically, it came out of psychoanalysis--a neurosis is a maladaptive form of behavior, which is what psychoanalysis set out to resolve. Depending on your school of thought, the neurosis could have any number of different origins. The problem is that neurosis is and was more a *value judgement* than anything else; if a doctor saw behavior he or she disapproved of, but it wasn't extreme enough to qualify for all-out psychosis, the behavior and the patient could be labelled "neurotic". "Mentall illness" is a little better, but not much; if you notice, the DSM-IV has new diseases and problems every time the APA rolls out a new edition, and most of the diseases are included based on *majority vote*, not scientific data per se. The difference is that "mental illness" uses a sort of metaphor (depression IS a physical illness) that makes emotional issues more concrete and scientific-sounding, whereas "neurosis" carried a connotation of overall "un-healthy"-ness. (I believe in treating mental illness, btw, I'm just comparing the two to show how there is still a lot of mushy value-judgement stuff going on in psychiatry mascarading as science). Neurosis also has a bad rep b/c it was mostly applied to women (the ultimate female "neurosis": HYSTERIA).Plus, when psychoanalysis hit it big in the US during the 40s-60s, any rich person with the time and inclination was considered "neurotic", yet not one got any happier from all the "therapy". Oh well.
poster:med_empowered
thread:554389
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050909/msgs/554679.html