Traumatic Neurosis

Neurosis, generally, is difficult of definition. We all know what it is, we recognize it, yet we cannot satisfactorily define it. A working concept which I have found valuable is as follows: "Neurosis is a disheartened reaction to a physical or social reverse." By a disheartened reaction I mean an exaggerated sickness response, and by physical reverse I mean any bodily injury or disease. And social reverse represents all the failures of the ego in contact with others—serious business losses, disappointments in love, attempts which have not reached their goal. Remembering that neurosis means a reaction to something, we, as physicians, must not be content when we label a man neurotic until we have sought behind the scene for the reverse responsible. The reverse represents an inciting cause of the neurosis. In one case it may be sudden ill health, in another it may be "love," in the third it