NEVROSI (NEVROSI). — The term n. was first used (1769) by the Scottish physician Cullen to designate all nervous and psychic anomalies and illnesses. In Italy it was introduced by Cirillo (1780), and in France by Pinel (1819), to indicate, in addition to hypochondria and hysteria, many other illnesses now clearly regarded as “organic.” The subsequent scientific development of the concept of n. has been characterized by the tendency to narrow its limits ever further.
In 1904 Dubois isolated, within the broad group of n., the psychoneuroses (v.), as forms involving a predominant intervention of mental representations. Until the present, the two terms have been used interchangeably by many authors. In any case, n. and psychoneuroses have universally been distinguished, since the nineteenth century, from other morbid forms by the term functional illnesses, that is, illnesses characterized by: 1) disturbance of function alone, 2) reversibility, 3) particular characteristics that follow laws different
from those of illnesses with anatomical findings, that is, from organic illnesses.
The difference between n. and psychosis (v.) is twofold: 1) psychopathological, insofar as the cardinal symptoms are qualitatively different and proper to each group; 2) social, since only in psychotics is there behavior that is often unpredictable and generically “alienated” from the norm, whereas the neurotic or psychoneurotic participates much more in normal psychology and is not, in the ordinary meaning of the word, a true “mentally ill person” to be admitted to an asylum.
Modern German authors (Schneider, 1946; Jahrreis, 1936), Italian authors (Bini and Bazzi, 1949), Anglo-Saxon authors (Wilson, 1942), and Spanish authors (Mira y Lopez, 1946) keep the two terms, n. and psychoneurosis, separate, assigning the term n. a restricted meaning, namely, “disease of the nervous system, without an anatomopathological finding, in which a psychic mechanism does not clearly intervene,” and they speak of “organ n.” (Organneurose). This term is intended to indicate n. of a particular 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 concerned, although it is the center of the pathological manifestations, does not contain them all within itself. Many forms of this type could more appropriately be designated as n. of specific physiological acts: n. of eating, digestion, metabolism, and sexual activity. To understand these n., it is necessary to bear in mind the fundamental somatopsychic plan of the organism and to recognize that it is now held with sufficient certainty that psychic influences (representations, emotions, volitional processes, suggestions) can have a profound resonance in somatic life. The extent to which these conditions are responsible, in an individual case, for the establishment of a morbid condition is an assessment that depends essentially on the predominant individual psychophysical state, conditioned by the development of the hereditary burden.
For “transference n.,” V. PSICANALISI.
Two varieties of n. frequently observed should be recalled: 1) the “imitation n.” (Nachahmungneurosen), observed especially in children, but also in adults, under the influence of an individual who is loved or who imposes himself through his personality; little by little, that person’s forms of expression are faithfully copied and, especially among the young, this process can lead to pronounced pathological states; in schools one can sometimes observe the onset of a true (psychic) epidemic of a given imitation n. 2) “habit n.” (Gewohnheitsneurosen), also observed especially in childhood; these n. may include those frequently observed forms that Zappert calls Lustneurosen, that is, “desire n.,” “pleasure n.,” such as, for example, biting one’s nails, rocking one’s head, and sucking one’s finger; others classify them among the “movement n.,” that is, among those forms to which many habitual movements of a compulsive, tic-like type belong.
For “post-traumatic n.” and “compensation n.,” V. NEVRASTENIA; PSICONEVROSI.