CriticaLink | Freud: On Narcissism | Terms

Neurosis is a broad term covering many forms of psychic distress. "Nervous conditions" less severe than the psychoses--they usually do not involve a psychic "break" with external reality--neuroses include states of anxiety, obsessions, phobias, and hysteria. For Lacan, neurosis is an inescapable condition of human consciousness because the psyche, caught up in its identification with an illusory, unattainable imago of wholeness and in its ultimately unfulfillable desire, can never attain the "equilibrium" or "self-awareness" that we commonly associate with "normal" mental health. The term was first applied in 1777 in the Scotish physician William Cullen's treatise First Line in the Practice of Medicine.

• Adler, Alfred
• Bleuler, Eugen
• Busch, Wilhelm
• Ferenczi, Sándor
• Heine, Heinrich
• Jung, Carl Gustav
• Kraepelin, Emil

• anaclitic object choice
• anxiety neurosis
• cathexis
• Cogito
• dementia praecox
• erotogenicity
• hypochondria
• hysteria
• idealization
• instinct
• introversion
• libido
• narcissism
• narcissistic object choice
• neurasthenia
• neurosis
• Oedipus complex
• paraphrenia
• primary narcissism
• retrogression
• schizophrenia
• sublimation
• superego
• transference neuroses
• Umwelt
• vicissitude