"Almost no one uses the term neurosis anymore"Someone said this to me which caused me much astonishment.
I checked Wikipedia and sure enough:
The American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has eliminated the category of "neurosis", reflecting a decision by the editors to provide descriptions of behavior as opposed to hidden psychological mechanisms as diagnostic criteria, and, according to The American Heritage Medical Dictionary, it is "no longer used in psychiatric diagnosis". These changes to the DSM have been controversial.(2015-03)
I was cured by a genuine psychotherapy in the late '70's . The elimination of this concept happened shortly afterwards in the 80's. Sadly almost all genuine psychotherapy has died out and this is one of the reasons. In their redefinitions of mental illness the DSM in eliminating "neurosis", is denying all relevance and entry to the inner world of humans. Only external behavior is of importance. Without any inspection of the inner world of course there can be no inner change.
Ironically now in popular culture even those who are anti-psychiatry have been indoctrinated with these ideas which are anti-growth or anti-therapeutic.This is one of the major ideas that I wish to communicate. The platform upon which psychotherapy is founded has been corrupted. It has been corrupted thoroughly not just in academia but in mass culture, popular culture and the social indoctrinations of the family in society.
To understand health people must learn to confront "what they know to be true" confront and be blown out of their complacency and acceptance of popular dysfunctional ideas.
The cure for introjection is to vomit out all the unprocessed ideas.
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(2016 update): So to re-cap The concept of neurosis has been memory holed because Bio-Med psychiatry has dominated and eliminated former effective psychotherapy. Concurrent with Bio-Med psychiatry has been a system of ideas designed to support their system that system is 100 percent anti-therapeutic and so their "Talk Therapy" is in effect Anti-Therapy. But it doesn't stop there, their ideology through their well funded propaganda machine has perpetrated and distorted the thinking of or entire society. In fact, other systems of psychotherapy which may even be "anti-psychiatry" have been co-opted by this ideology.
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Neurosis is a functional idea, the context of which is to resolve psychological problems. The context of Bio-Med Psychiatry and their associated psychotherapy now which they now refer to as "Talk Therapy" is not to solve problems. The new psychotherapy is about policing behaviour, the drugs that the patients take incapacitate their critical judgment and make the amenable to these policing methods. So of course they are only interested in diagnosis to find the label and the box in which they will permanently imprison their patients,.
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Probably any idea a person has heard since 1980 about psychotherapy they probably had best throw it out or order a ton of salt. Actually people need to evaluate ideas in terms of goals and intents. Go back to reading the literature of the 60's before psychotherapy died. Is the object to cure and resolve, yes or no?
"You can't win without a ticket." If you don't intend to resolve a problem or condition, then you certainly won't. Someone told me they went on SSRI's for postpartum depression. Twenty years later this emotional complex was still in suspended animation, frozen development, due to the taking of SSRI's
Life stopped for twenty years and is still stopped. This is the Bio-Med solution.
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Dr W. once said in a group "Neurosis is unfinished business". Unfinished with mother, father etc." ... I think it's a beautiful and elegant descriptive theory. In the same way the theory of relativity is elegant. We will always have some unfinished business but work on the major ones and the major neurosis is gone.
GONE, Cured. Resilient.
Neurosis to me, is not some abstract fuzzy concept. It means exactly what was said in that succinct sentence, it tells what is is and how to deal with it. The idea of neurosis perhaps does not cover all emotional dysfunctions. However, on the other hand I can see a way to apply the theory so that it might. In any case
neurosis is a human common denominator. It's a dimension in which we can look at and evaluate almost any and all human beings.Neurosis is woven into the history and civilization of Human Beings.
As far as being "hidden", I'm sure the mechanism of neurosis is hidden to a Bio-Med Psychiatrist., just as I am sure that what life really is is hidden from most of them. My opinion is that most Bio-Med Psychiatrists are suffering from Socially Induced Psychopathic Syndrome (SIPS) and they need to put that in the DSM. I mean this is the sense that psychopaths are incapable of empathy and experiencing the full range of human emotions. (No, sympathy the common tool of manipulation, is not empathy). In this sense most Bio Med psychiatrists are afflicted with the same lack of qualities through social indoctrination and a ruthless desire for high financial and social status rewards. Unfortunately no drug will cure this syndrome, perhaps induced poverty might alleviate their collective condition. . To people with some modicum of functional experience the mechanism of neurosis is as clear as daylight.
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Psychotherapy is psychotherapy. It is not "Talk Psychotherapy" I find this latter term insulting as I experienced profound transformation in psychotherapy. "Talk Therapy " is anti-therapy, it is policing behavior, it is behaviorism. The emphasis on Bio-Med anti-therapy of course is just "talk" because the emotions are suppressed by the actions of the drugs on the prefrontal cortex. psychotherapy involves experiencing profound emotions, emotional pain and usually some non verbal bioenergetics as well...far beyond just talk.
Genuine psychotherapy uses and needs functional concepts. I advise those who are interested in actual change to dig neurosis and other lost concepts out of the memory hole.
