NEUROSES. - The term n. was used for the first time (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, today clearly "organic." The further scientific development of the concept of n. is characterized by the tendency to restrict its limits ever more.
In 1904 Dubois isolates, within the vast group of the n., the psychoneuroses (v.), as forms with a preponderant intervention of mental representations. Until today the two terms have been used indifferently by many authors. However, the n. and the psychoneuroses have been distinguished by all, since the 19th century, from the other morbid forms, by the term functional diseases, that is, diseases characterized by: 1) disturbance of function alone, 2) reversibility, 3) particular characteristics that follow laws different from diseases with an anatomical finding, that is, from organic diseases.
The difference between n. and psychosis (v.) is twofold: 1) psychopathological, in that the cardinal symptoms are qualitatively different and proper to each group; 2) social, since only in psychotics is there a conduct often unpredictable and generically "alienated" from the norm, whereas the neurotic or psychoneurotic participates much more in normal psychology and is not, in the vulgar meaning of the word, a true "mentally ill" person, to be committed to the asylum.
Modern German authors (Schneider, 1946; Jahrreis, 1936), Italian (Bini and Bazzi, 1949), Anglo-Saxon (Wilson, 1942), Spanish (Mira y Lopez, 1946) keep the two terms separate, n. and psychoneurosis, attributing to the term n. a restricted meaning, that is, "disease of the nervous system, without an anatomo-pathological finding, in which a psychic mechanism does not clearly intervene," and they speak of "organ n." (Organneurose). With this term they mean to indicate n. of a specific organ of the body, and thus one speaks of cardiac, gastric, genital n., etc.; it is necessary, however, to bear in mind that the organ involved, although being the center of the pathological manifestations, does not exhaust them all in itself. Many forms of this type could better be designated as n. of specific physiological acts: n. of feeding, of digestion, of metabolism, of sexual activity. For the understanding of these n. it is necessary to bear in mind the fundamental somatopsychic plane of the organism and to bear in mind that today it is held with sufficient certainty that psychic influences (representations, emotions, volitional processes, suggestions) can 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 an evaluation that depends essentially on the predominant individual psychophysical state, conditioned by the development of the hereditary burden.
For "transference n.," v. PSICOANALISI.
Two varieties of n. of frequent observation must be remembered: 1) "imitation n." (Nachahmungneurosen) which are observed especially in children, but also in adults, under the influence of an individual who is loved or who imposes himself by his personality; little by little his forms of expression are faithfully copied and, especially in the young, one can arrive, by this path, at marked pathological states; in schools one can sometimes observe the onset of a true (psychic) epidemic of a given imitation n. 2) "habit n." (Gewohnheitsneurosen), which are also observed especially in infancy; into these n. can fall those forms, of frequent observation, that Zappert calls Lustneurosen, that is, "n. of craving," "of pleasure," such as, for example, biting one's nails, rocking the head, sucking one's finger; others classify them among the "movement n.," that is, among those forms to which belong many habitual movements, of a compulsive, tic-like type.
For "post-traumatic" and "compensation" n., v. NEVRASTENIA; PSICONEVROSI.