Concept in Definition ABC
Miscellanea / / July 04, 2021
By Florencia Ucha, on Jul. 2010
The word neurotic refers to that which is proper to the neurosis or that is relative to it.
Own of neurosis. Person suffering from neurosis
And the other of the uses that this term presents allows to refer to that person, an individual who suffers from neurosis.
Meanwhile, neurosis is a functional disease of the Central Nervous System, which is characterized especially by emotional instability.
Inability to handle emotions that causes extreme anguish and leads to the development of defense mechanisms to alleviate that pain
That is, those who suffer from neurosis have problems when it comes to managing their emotions and this leads them to develop a pathology that makes it impossible to empathize with the environment that surrounds them.
The word is the direct consequence of the proposal that opportunely, in the year 1769, made the Scottish physician and chemist William Cullen.
Neurosis literally means full of nerves and Cullen defined it as a series of symptoms that accompany fluid disturbances neural, which does not present organic damage and whoever manifests it will be nervous, hysterical, depressed, irritable, but without losing his lucidity.
Neurosis is a mental disorder in fact but in which no type of organic lesion is evidenced. The neurotic individual has a high level of distress and at the same time a disruptive hypertrophy of the mechanisms that allow to compensate it, then, those who sufferers feel the need to develop repetitive behaviors to reduce the level of stress reached.
Although they often confuse them, we must say that there are substantial differences between neurosis and psychosis, the most important being the that we mentioned above, and that is that the neurotic will never present a disconnection with reality as usually happens with the psychosis.
Now, their degree of stress is certainly important and, for example, as a defense mechanism against that reality hostile that they have to go through, they will become distressed and will develop inappropriate behaviors, contrary to what is socially expected of them.
Of course that inappropriate response is unconscious.
In most cases they are aware of the disease and this adds even more distress.
We must say that there are mild neuroses that allow the person to develop in everyday life but there are other serious ones that make it impossible.
The lack of adaptation to reality and the denial of it to avoid taking charge of the reality that hurts or does not like, are issues that go back to the neurotic's past, that is, in most cases the causes of them are found in the childhood.
In the 19th century, the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, established a differentiation of neuroses: phobic, panic, hysterical, hypochondriacal, obsessive compulsive, depressive, depersonalization and neurasthenic.
Today we talk about disorders
Currently, both psychiatry and psychology Clinicians decided to put aside the notion of neurosis, choosing specialists to speak of different types of disorders such as: anxiety (phobias, obsessive compulsive disorder, agoraphobia), depressive (cyclothymia, depressive episodes), dissociative (disorder of personality multiple, depersonalization, possession, trance), sexual (pedophilia, masochism and sadism) and sleep disorders (insomnia, hypersomnia).
Specialists in the field coincide in pointing out that people with the mission of protecting themselves from anxiety resort to different defense mechanisms such as repression, denial, projection, the displacement and intellectualization. Then, if the patterns of a neurosis are observed, the safest thing is that one is facing a personality disorder.
Treatment
Neurosis can be detected and identified through different psychological tests and what is advisable to improve the quality of life is to start a therapy with a professional.
In working with the therapist, the neurotic, he will be able to identify the causes of his illness, and with the guidance of the doctor, to overcome them through the modification of behaviors.
The treatment of neurosis is vital for those who suffer from it as it will help a lot to improve their quality of life.
Nervous and obsessive person
On the other hand, in common and popular language when someone says that this or that is a neurotic, what they are most likely to mean is that it is a obsessive or nervous person.
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