MEANING
A historical umbrella term for psychological disorders involving anxiety or distress without a general loss of reality contact.
Use it for
discussing an older psychological account of anxiety; interpreting a historical text’s diagnostic language; distinguishing a period psychological label from a current clinical diagnosisEnables accurate discussion of historical psychological explanations and psychologically inflected literature without presenting an old umbrella label as a current diagnosis. Writing functions: Psychological States.
Words that belong together
- a theory of neurosis
- anxiety neurosis
- obsessional neurosis
On the page
The chapter retains neurosis when discussing the analyst’s original vocabulary, but not as a present-day diagnosis.
Her letters describe the recurring fear as a neurosis, a label the biographer treats as historically situated.
Word forms
- Base
- neurosis
Usage notes
Countable or uncountable: neurosis; plural neuroses. Historical psychological noun, not an adjective. Related adjective: neurotic; it is not a new entry here. Register: technical. Commonness: moderately common in historical psychology; less common in general prose (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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