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.
