DEFINITION:
The term “neurosis” refers to a mental disorder that seriously affects an individual’s personality, mood, or ability to function socially, without causing overwhelming disturbance or incapacitation (see the Glossary article, psychosis).
Neurosis may manifest in a variety of ways, notably obsessive-compulsive behavior and unfocused anxiety. It may be of longer or shorter duration, depending on etiology, the patient’s life circumstances, and treatment.
“Neurosis” should not be confused with “neuroticism,” which is a personality disorder and, as such, is more deep-seated and intractable than a “neurosis.”
ETYMOLOGY:
The term “neurosis” was invented by the Scottish physician William Cullen (1710–1790) and first published in his 1769 Latin medical treatise, Synopsis Nosologiae Methodicae [Synopsis of Methodical Nosology].
“Neurosis” falls under the category of “New Latin,” meaning a word invented in modern times that is derived from Classical Latin or Greek lexical elements which did not previously exist in that form or with that meaning.
In the present case, the stem “neuro-“ derives from the English word “nerve,” which is attested from the fifteenth century. “Nerve,” in turn, derives from the classical Latin term nervus, akin to Greek neuron, meaning “sinew,” “tendon,” “cord,” or “string.”
The suffix “-osis” indicates a disorder or diseased state affecting the organ, tissue, or other bodily structure referred to by the root to which it is affixed.
“Neurosis,” thus, means “nervous disease or disorder.”
DISCUSSION:
In the early twentieth century, the term “neurosis” passed out of the recondite medical vocabulary into everyday speech.
This was due, in no small part, to the use of the term “neurosis” in psychoanalytic theory as expounded by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). In the framework of Freudian theory, “neuroses” were thought to originate in adverse childhood experiences, which were “repressed” and contributed to mental disturbance in adulthood via unconscious mechanisms.
It is difficult to exaggerate the immense celebrity and profound influence of Freudian psychoanalysis upon people’s general world outlook during the first half of the twentieth century. This influence began to fade during the second half of that century.
Today, although the term “neurosis” persists to some degree, especially at the level of popular culture, for the most part it has been superseded in the psychoanalytic and broader psychological literature by a panoply of terms for personality disorders that are better-defined and better-substantiated empirically.