In this article, we are going to be taking a look at what Neurosis is all about.
Our major emphasis is on
- Traumatic Neurosis
- Hypochondriacal Neurosis
Traumatic Neurosis
According to Trauma disassociation theory, the development of new personalities occurs in response to severe stress. For vast majority of patients, this begins to occur in early childhood frequently in response to physical or sexual abuse.
These conditions are being referred to as Traumatic Neurosis or disassociative disorders. In response to the trauma and their helplessness to resist it, children may engage in something that self hypnotizes and dissassociate them from reality.
They often create new alternate identity to detach themselves from trauma, to transfer what is happening to someone else who can handle it and blunt the pain.
Types of Traumatic Neurosis
1. Psychogenic Amnesia
2. Psychogenic Fuge
3. Dissociative Identity Disorder
1. Psychogenic Amnesia
In psychogenic Amnesia a person responds to stressful event with extensive but selective memory loss. Some people cannot remember anything about their past, others can no longer recall specific events, people, places or object, although other contents of memory sch as language and cognitive or motor skills remain intact.
2. Psychogenic Fuge
This is a more profound dissociative disorder in which a person looses all sense of personal identity, give up his or her customary life, wanders to a new far away location and establishes a new identity.
Usually the fuge is triggered by a highly stressful event or trauma and it may last from a few hours or days or several years.
Some adolescent runaways have been found in a fuge state, and married fuge victims may wed someone else and start a new chapter of their life.
Typically the fuge ends when the person suddenly recovers his or her original identity and walks up mystified and distressed at being in a strange place under strange circumstances.
3. Dissociative Identity Disorder
This form of disorder formally multiple personality disorder, is the most striking and widely publicized of the dissociative disorder.
In this disorder, two or more separate personalities coexist in the same person, A primary or host personality appears more often than others, but each personality has its own integrated set of memories and behaviours.
The personalities may or may not know about existence of others. They can also differ in their age and gender, with one being make and another being female. These separate personalities can differ in mentality, behaviour and physiology.
Hypochondriacal Neurosis
This is a mental illness characterized by excessive fear of or preoccupation with a serious illness despite medial testing and reassurance to the contrary.
It primarily affect adults, although it is now increasingly recognized in children and adolescents
Causes of Hypochondriasis
The cause of this disease condition is not precisely known, however
- in adult it may sometimes reflect a self centered character structure or a wish to be taken care of by others.
- it may also have been copied from a parent behaviour
- In elderly people, hypochondriasis may be associated with depression grief
- it may also involve biologically based hypersensitivity to internal stimuli
Symptoms
- Worried about being physically sick, although some expresses fear of insanity
- symptoms may range from general descriptions of a specific illness to unusual complaints
- in many instances, the symptoms affect intensified awareness of ordinary body functions, such as heartbeat, breathing, or stomach noises.
- Patient misinterprets bodily functions and attribute them to a serious or even lethal cause
Characteristics of Hypochondriacal Neurosis
the following features are characteristics of this disease condition
- the patient is not psychotic
- the patient gets upset or blames the doctor when told there is nothing wrong or there is a psychological basis for the problem
- there is a correlation between episode of hypochondriasis behaviour and stressful periods in the patient’s life
- this behaviour has lasted for at least six months.
Treatment
the goal of therapy is to help the patient live with the symptoms and to modify thinking and behaviour that reinforces hypochondriasis symptoms. This treatment orientation is called supportive treatment. They may include;
- medications to relieve anxiety
- some clinicians look carefully for masked depression and treat with antidepressants.
- follow up care includes irregular physical check-ups because about 30% of patients with this condition will eventually develop a serious physical illness.
We hope this information was helpful. Feel free to ask your question in the comment section below.