NEUROSES (NEVROSI). — The term *n.* was first used in 1769 by the Scottish physician Cullen to designate all nervous and psychic anomalies and diseases. In Italy it was introduced by Cirillo (1780) and in France by Pinel (1819), to indicate, in addition to hypochondria and hysteria, many other diseases now clearly recognized as “organic.” The further scientific development of the concept of *n.* is characterized by a tendency to restrict its boundaries ever more narrowly.
In 1904, Dubois isolated within the broad group of *n.* the psychoneuroses (v.), as forms in which mental representations play a predominant role. To this day, many authors have used the two terms interchangeably. However, *n.* and psychoneuroses have long been distinguished from other morbid forms by the term “functional diseases,” i.e., diseases characterized by: 1) disturbance of function alone, 2) reversibility, 3) particular characteristics that follow laws different from those governing diseases with anatomical findings, i.e., organic diseases.
The difference between *n.* and psychosis (v.) is twofold: 1) psychopathological, inasmuch as the cardinal symptoms are qualitatively different and proper to each group; 2) social, since only in psychotics does behavior often become unpredictable and generically “alienated” from the norm, whereas the neurotic or psychoneurotic participates far more in normal psychology and is not, in the vulgar sense of the word, a true “mentally ill” person to be committed to an asylum.
Modern German (Schneider, 1946; Jahrreis, 1936), Italian (Bini and Bazzi, 1949), Anglo-Saxon (Wilson, 1942), and Spanish (Mira y López, 1946) authors keep the two terms separate, attributing to *n.* a restricted meaning, namely, “disease of the nervous system without an anatomopathological finding, in which a clear psychic mechanism does not intervene,” and speak of “organ neuroses” (*Organneurosen*). With this term, they intend to indicate *n.* of a specific organ of the body, and thus speak of cardiac, gastric, genital, etc., *n.* It must be borne in mind, however, that the organ as a whole, though the center of pathological manifestations, does not exhaust them entirely. Many such forms might better be designated as *n.* of specific physiological acts: *n.* of nutrition, digestion, metabolism, sexual activity. To understand these *n.*, it is necessary to keep in mind the fundamental soma-psyche plane of the organism and to recognize that psychic influences (representations, emotions, volitional processes, suggestions) can today be held with sufficient certainty to have a profound resonance in somatic life. How far these conditions are responsible, in the individual case, for the establishment of a morbid situation is a judgment that depends essentially on the predominant psychophysical state of the individual, conditioned by the development of the hereditary burden.
For “transference neurosis,” V. PSYCHOANALYSIS.
Two varieties of *n.* frequently observed should be noted: 1) “imitation neuroses” (*Nachahmungsneurosen*), which are seen especially in children but also in adults, under the influence of a loved or authoritative individual; gradually, the latter’s modes of expression are faithfully copied, and especially in the young, this can lead to marked pathological states; in schools, one may sometimes observe the outbreak of a veritable (psychic) epidemic of a given imitation *n.* 2) “habit neuroses” (*Gewohnheitsneurosen*), which are also observed chiefly in childhood; among these *n.* may be included those frequently observed forms that Zappert calls *Lustneurosen*, i.e., “neuroses of desire,” “of pleasure,” such as nail-biting, head-rocking, thumb-sucking; others classify these among the “motor neuroses,” i.e., those forms that include many habitual, compulsive, tic-like movements.
For “post-traumatic” and “compensation neuroses,” V. NEURASTHENIA; PSYCHONEUROSES.