Neurotics and care for it

Among neurotics are fanatically neat people, inveterate worriers al- ways dwelling on the worst that can possibly happen, uncontrollable overeaters. Most neurotics get along; they earn their livelihood, frequently a handsome one, but at the cost of great effort and pain; have a home life (often dismal); and seem normal in some activities while markedly abnormal in others. While a full-blown neurosis can be painful and make life miserable,still it may protect some people from things they unconsciously feel would make them even more miserable. A mother who is overly concerned about her children, constantly worrying over them, may in fact resent them but hides this feeling, which she cannot tolerate, by being overattentive. Neuroses can be broken down into more than half a dozen types.

1. ANXIETY NEUROSIS. In this type, the person experiences episodes of anxiety which may range from mild uneasiness to panic. Sometimes physical signs develop: sweating, dizziness, diarrhea, breathing difficulty, chest pain. The victim may feel tense and irritable, may awaken in the night in a state of terror. A characteristic feeling is one of U anxious expectation," the way one normally feels when something dreadful is about to happen, except that the victim of an anxiety neurosis may have no idea as to what the dreadful thing might be. This state often is linked with a fear of losing love-for example, when there is a conflict in the unconscious mind between a desire to hate the loved one (perhaps to get even for having been hurt) and a desire to win that person's love. Sometimes, the anxiety is shunted off by linking it with the situation in which it was experienced. If it occurred first in an elevator, the individual may blame the elevator, which he then fears and avoids in the hope of a voiding the anxiety.

2. PHOBIAS. These can be divided into two types: common phobias, or exaggerated fears of things most people have some fear of, such as death; and specific phobias, or exaggerated fears of things that aren't in themselves ordinarily frightening, such as open fields. Psychiatrists usually exclude more realistic fears stemming from forgotten experiences, such as an adult fear of touching an electric cord because of a forgotten experience in childhood of receiving a severe shock from a defective cord. Phobias usually are rooted in guilt feelings, in fears that, having been "bad," something is bound to "get you." The list of phobias is almost endless. Among them: acrophobia, the fear of high places; agoraphobia, of open spaces; aichmophobia, of sharp and pointed objects; anthropophobia, of people; claustrophobia, of en- closed spaces; climacophobia, of falling downstairs; dromophobia, of crossing the street; hypnophobia, of sleep; kleptophobia, of stealing; mechanophobia, of machinery; monophobia, of being alone; mysophobia, of dirt and contamination; necrophobia, of the dead; nyctophobia, of the dark; pantophobia, of everything; phagophobia, of swallowing; syphilo- phobia, of syphilis; topophobia, of situations (stage fright); zoophobia, of animals.

3. HYPOCHONDRIA

 In this condition, the mind's illness is manifested through abnormal preoccupation with body organs or functions. Afraid of, or convinced he suffers from, physical disease, the patient notices many body sensations, even those of normal fatigue, which do not con- cern other people. There is no physical cause for the condition, but merely assuring the patient that he is all right physically does not eliminate the hypochondriacal attitude.

4. CONVERSION HYSTERIA. This differs from hypochondria in that it produces a physical manifestation which, although not real in one sense, is certainly real to the individual. One example is hysterical paralysis, which may develop in a soldier undergoing severe conflict between a desire to be brave and a desire not to be killed. Suddenly he feels his legs paralyzed. He is not faking. Pins can be stuck in his legs and he has no feeling. Yet, when the conflict is resolved, either by circumstances or by the soldier himself, the paralysis vanishes.

5. OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE NEUROSIS. This leads people to do things without knowing why or without wanting to do them. The impulse stems from ideas that have no relationship in the individual's conscious mind. For example, a person always puts on a certain garment inside out. It is a kind of ritual, an appeal to magic powers, much like the knock on wood some people use. But the normal person who knocks on wood does so as a kind of joke because he has been told it is a lucky thing to do; a victim of neurosis sees no joke in his rituals, performing them because he is extremely insecure. As a child, he may have turned to his own "magic" rituals in a desperate attempt to cope with problems too great for him to handle.

6. NEURASTHENIA. The word means, literally, nerve weakness. It was once supposed that nerves in the brain could actually tire and that brain fatigue would result. Now it's known that neurasthenia, like hypochondria and conversion hysteria, is a product of emotional conflict. The patient honestly feels too weak or tired to get out of bed or even to think coherently. He can sleep for extended periods impossible for a well per- son, or can lie for hours doing nothing. Yet he is not physically ill; resting will not cure him; only solving his problems can lead to cure.

7. NEUROTIC DEPRESSION. It is not neurotic to experience unhappiness or depression on occasion-for example, when a loved one dies. It is normal to experience grief and to mourn; in fact, as we have seen earlier, this is an essential process. Normal people do not grieve almost endlessly and to the point of melancholia, not because they are insensitive or superficial; their grief other Problems,may be even more profound than that of badly adjusted people. But when the latter suffer from neurotic depression, they feel helpless; their low self-esteem convinces them they can never cope. These neurotic depressions are so closely bound up with feelings of insecurity and inadequacy that they can be triggered by events that well-adjusted people accept matter-of-factly. Such depressions cause great suffering.

5.       DISSOCIATIVE NEUROSIS. Anxiety may cause a person to forget for a time who he is and what he is doing. When he regains awareness, he has forgotten what took place during the forgetful period. An extreme example of this neurosis is amnesia. Character Disorders A character disorder, also called behavior disorder, involves a lack of conscience or a pattern of conduct that violates the standards of social responsibility. People with the disorder do, indeed, behave as if they did not respect standards important to most people. A character disorder may be harmful to society as well as to the individual.