neurosisn.
/njᵿˈrəʊsɪs/, /njʊəˈrəʊsɪs/, U.S. /n(j)ʊˈroʊsəs/ 1. Medicine and Psychology. Originally: any disease or disorder characterized by abnormal nervous or mental function, esp. when unaccompanied by other systemic or local disease; a primary or functional neurological disease or disorder (now historical). Later: psychological disorder in which there is disabling or distressing anxiety, without severe disorganization or distortion of behaviour or personality (cf. psychosis n. 1); an instance or type of this.Neurosis is no longer used as a diagnostic category in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association.accident, anxiety, compulsion, obsessional, suburban neurosis, etc.: see the first element.
ΘΚΠ
the world > health and disease > ill health > a disease > disorders of internal organs > disorders of nervous system > [noun]
neurosis1783
neurotic1841
neuropathy1857
the world > health and disease > mental health > mental illness > degree or type of mental illness > [noun] > neurosis
nerves1742
neurosis1783
neuropathy1857
nervosisme1884
neurose1886
neuroticism1900
the world > health and disease > mental health > mental illness > degree or type of mental illness > [noun] > other mental illnesses
neurosis1783
mutism1824
Americanitis1882
lata1884
miryachit1884
negativism1892
obsession1892
ressentiment1896
resentment1899
pseudologia1903
echopraxia1904
complex1907
pseudo-homosexuality1908
regression1910
kleptolagnia1917
sadomasochism1919
poriomania1921
superiority complex1921
martyr complex1926
rejection1931
nemesism1938
acting out1945
catathymia1949
elective mutism1950
psychosyndrome1965
panic attack1966
Munchausen syndrome by proxy1977
Polle syndrome1977
panic disorder1978
chronic factitious disorder1980
bigorexia1985
fabricated or induced illness1994
selective mutism1999
1783 W. Cullen First Lines Pract. Physic III. 2 I propose to comprehend, under the title of Neuroses, all those preternatural affections of sense or motion, which are without pyrexia as a part of the primary disease.
1834 S. Cooper Good's Study Med. (ed. 4) I. 167 He considers it [sc. lead colic] to be a neurosis.
a1836 Encycl. Metrop. (1845) VII. 527/1 The diseases of function..embrace the neuroses, hæmorrhages, and dropsies.
1874 H. Maudsley Respons. in Mental Dis. i. 32 Families in which insanity, epilepsy, or some other neurosis exists.
a1883 C. H. Fagge Princ. & Pract. Med. (1886) I. 667 One very important paroxysmal neurosis is migraine.
1890 J. S. Billings National Med. Dict. II Telegraphers' cramp, neurosis analogous to writers' cramp, affecting muscles of forearm of telegraph-operators.
1897 T. C. Allbutt et al. Syst. Med. III. 482 Nephralgia is perhaps the commonest of the abdominal neuroses.
1897 H. Ellis & J. A. Symonds Sexual Inversion vi. 130 There is reason to believe that the erotic fetichist usually displays the further congenital element of hereditary neurosis.
1904 G. S. Hall Adolescence I. iv. 285 The anxiety neurosis was relatively more common in women than in men.
1906 M. Prince Dissociation of Personality iii. 22 A dissociation of the mind, known as a state of hysteria or ‘traumatic neurosis’.
1911 M. Morris Dis. Skin (ed. 5) iv. 54 (heading) Neuroses of the skin. .Classification of neuro-dermatoses.
1912 A. A. Brill tr. S. Freud Sel. Papers on Hysteria (ed. 2) iv. 76 It is very difficult to examine a case of neurosis before it has been subjected to a thorough analysis.
1924 W. B. Selbie Psychol. Relig. xv. 286 The inception of this method is due to Professor Sigmund Freud, of Vienna, whose study of neuroses led him to find underlying them certain unfulfilled desires, generally unknown to the patient, and based chiefly on repressed sexuality.
1934 Mod. Psychologist June 29/2 The Adlerian psychologists look upon stuttering as the symptom of a neurosis.
1956 E. Fromm Art of Loving ii. 45 Certain types of neurosis, like obsessional neurosis, develop more on the basis of a one-sided father attachment, while others, like hysteria, alcoholism, inability to assert oneself and to cope with life realistically, and depressions, result from mother-centredness.
1966 T. Lupton Managem. & Social Sci. i. 14 Nor were they due to neurosis, i.e. to failures in the mental capacity of individuals to adjust to reality.
1978 Australian 5 Sept. 5/2 The American Psychiatric Association had decided the word neurosis doesn't mean anything.
1987 A. M. Colman Facts, Fallacies & Frauds in Psychol. vi. 157 Speculations have been offered that anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are special kinds of phobias or obsessive-compulsive neuroses.
1991 Brit. Jrnl. Psychiatry 114 675/2 Roth..studied 135 patients suffering from depersonalization, phobic anxiety, and other symptoms characteristic of neurosis and temporal lobe disturbance.
1995 E. Trillat in G. Berrios & R. Porter Hist. Clin. Psychiatry xvii. 438 In Cullen's work the word neurosis meant illness of the nerves. With Freud the word now refers to a psychological or psychical illness.
2. Cerebral neural activity resulting in or associated with mental activity; an instance of this. Cf. psychosis n. 2. Now historical.
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the world > health and disease > mental health > mental illness > degree or type of mental illness > [noun] > neurosis > physical cause of
neurosis1871
1871 T. H. Huxley in Contemp. Rev. Nov. 462 As it is very necessary to keep up a clear distinction between these two processes, let the one be called neurosis, and the other psychosis.
1882 Nature 9 Feb. 335 Some intimate association between neurosis and psychosis being thus accepted as a fact by the hypothesis of automatism.
1892 Philos. Rev. 1 482 We have reason to believe that there are no ‘psychoses’ (mental phenomena) without corresponding ‘neuroses’ (organic phenomena).
1906 Jrnl. Philos., Psychol. & Sci. Methods 3 150 Then we should have a strictly scientific and fairly unambiguous term [sc. psychosis]..corresponding to the neurologist's ‘neurosis’ for any and every brain change or state.
1923 Philos. Rev. 32 226 By ‘psychosis’ we mean its qualitative nature, and by ‘neurosis’ its structural relationships.
2000 Brit. Jrnl. Hist. Sci. 33 22 (note) It was not the strong thesis of monism, or neurosis–psychosis identity, which anchored Morgan's belief that animals had minds.
3. In extended use: anxiety or malaise experienced by an individual, group, nation, etc.; an instance of this.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > emotion > suffering > state of being upset or perturbed > worry > anxiety > [noun] > specific anxiety
life careOE
neurosis1927
1927 New Republic 21 Sept. 129/1 The emphasis has swung from thought to feeling, from bare information and skill to character and personality... This began with the neuroses of the clinic, was transferred promptly to the neuroses of the family, then to the neuroses of all the large human enterprises, and the neuroses of nations.
1945 E. Waugh Brideshead Revisited ii. i. 202 In that city there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.
1959 I. Berlin Four Ess. Liberty (1969) iv. 198 The mass neurosis of our age is agoraphobia; men are terrified of disintegration and of too little direction.
1966 Listener 15 Dec. 879/2 The whole Rhodesian situation has driven Zambian politicians into a kind of neurosis.
1989 P. Fussell Wartime xv. 221 A sober excursus on the worldwide neurosis which issues in wars.
1998 Vanity Fair (N.Y.) Dec. 158/2 His comedies form one of the main bridges between modernism and postmodernism, linking the bookish neurosis and absurdism of the bohemian 50s and 60s..to the flippant, noncommital..irony of the yuppie ascendancy.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2003; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1783