the.com/neurosis
The mind arguing with itself and calling it vigilance.
means A pattern of persistent anxiety, obsessive thoughts, or irrational worry that distorts a person's sense of reality without breaking from it entirely.
from Coined in the 18th century from Greek 'neuron' (nerve) plus the medical suffix '-osis' (abnormal condition), originally meaning any disease of the nervous system with no visible organic cause. The word's whole career has been one of narrowing — it started as a catch-all for unexplained physical complaints, then Freud and the early psychoanalysts seized it to mean anxiety born of inner conflict rather than damaged tissue, which is the sense that stuck.
- origin
- Coined 1769, Scottish doctor, meant nerve disease
- freud's take
- Anxiety leaking out sideways as symptoms
- not psychosis
- You know it is irrational; you do it anyway
- status today
- Dropped from DSM, survives in everyday self-diagnosis