[Nosography of the neuroses. 5. Aspects and problems of the neurotic reaction as an adaptive disorder].

Abstract

The term "neurosis", although is no longer used in the recent American classification, is still considered valid and firmly established in our learning even with its etymological and semantic inexactitudes. So in this 5th coordinated and systematical study on the nosography of neurosis the Authors observe its less known and less described aspects in literature, such as short-dated neurosis forms with acute course. These situations of acute neurosis can be explained as unspecific answers to stress situations, that is to say as reactions to conscious or removed biological and psychological events. They are disorders of adaptation with a single pathogenetical mechanism and their aspect suggests the approach to alarm-reactions for unspecific stressors. This neurotic reaction of adaptation, conditioned by the subject's cognitive interpretation, has the characteristics of an exaggerated and disorderly alarm-reaction with particular polymorphism of its symptomatology. The Authors elaborate a model of the symptomatology and they examine the differential diagnosis of these reactions. Regarding the evolution and the course of this disorders they assert that the prognosis is good, but in some cases there may be the passage to a form of structured neurosis or the evolution to a depressive syndrome; they interpret this as a decompensation due to the exhaustion of fitting mechanisms. At the end of the study the authors illustrate the therapy.