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, 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 for them 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 alterations in neural fluids, which does not present organic damage and whoever manifests it will be nervous, hysterical, depressive, 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 suffer from it feel the need to develop repetitive behaviors to reduce the level of stress reached.
Although they tend to be confused, we must say that there are substantial differences between neurosis and psychosis, the most important being the one mentioned above, and that is that the neurotic will never present a disconnection with reality as it usually happens with psychosis.
However, their degree of stress is certainly important and, for example, as a defense mechanism against that hostile reality that they have to go through, they will become distressed and 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 its denial 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, anxiety, hysterical, hypochondriacal, obsessive-compulsive, depressive, depersonalization and neurasthenic.
Today we talk about disorders
Currently, both psychiatry and clinical psychology decided to put aside the notion of neurosis, choosing specialists to talk about different types of disorders such as: anxiety (phobias, obsessive compulsive disorder, agoraphobia), depressive (cyclothymia, depressive episodes) , dissociative (multiple personality disorder, depersonalization disorder, possession, trance), sexual (pedophilia, masochism and sadism) and sleep (insomnia, hypersomnia).
Specialists in the field coincide in pointing out that people with the mission of protecting themselves from anguish resort to different defense mechanisms such as repression, denial, projection, 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 the advisable thing to do to improve the quality of life is to start 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 since it will help them 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.
