neurosis

a relatively mild mental disorder, characterized by symptoms such as hysteria, anxiety, depression, or obsessive behaviour

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

neurosis

a disorder of the emotions with no underlying physical cause for the feelings of ill health it engenders. Neurosis is a term covering a variety of AFFECTIVE DISORDERS, such as anxiety, depression and obsessive states. Though there is no disease, there is considerable unhappiness. Mental health may be restored through various therapies, PSYCHOANALYSIS primarily being designed to help neurotics, but client-centred therapy (see Carl ROGERS) within the counselling movement, and cognitive BEHAVIOUR THERAPY are also appropriate. Neurosis should be distinguished from PSYCHOSIS which describes much more severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia.

Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2000

neurosis

[nu̇′rō·səs]

(psychology)

A category of emotional maladjustments characterized by some impairment of thinking and judgment, with anxiety as the chief symptom.

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References in periodicals archive

The key argument here concerns the co-implication of chronophobia and chronophilia.

Dying For Time: Proust, Woolf, And Nabokov

Yet Levinas also finds a lack of patience in other distinctively modern, Western poses: the considerable energy spent contemplating "correct" ways to express youthful rebellion; the need to experience absolutely everything; impatient and superficial demands for "immediate relevance"; the dangerous tendency of "large," "generous" (ideological) ideas to pass unnoticed into their opposites ("intellectual Stalinism"), and even the super-sophisticated, utterly au courant readers and writers of Le Monde, for whom the depths of complex talmudic thought can be only an occasion for great humor.(12) Both this critique of modern Western chronopathy, or chronophobia, and those structures of Jewish religious and communal life Levinas advocates instead, will feature prominently in "Model of the West."

Critique, tradition, and the religious imagination: an essay on Levinas' talmudic readings

Lee writes in "Bridget Riley's Eye/Body Problem," the third chapter of her Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960s (2004), "This was work of a keenly felt physicality, even a dangerous physicality....

The return of Op: with two major survey shows on Op art running almost concurrently in Europe and the United States, we asked contributing editor David Rimanelli and art historian Sarah K. Rich to assess the exhibitions and reflect on the resurgence of interest in--and contemporary resonance of--this long-moribund movement

She is the author, most recently, of Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960s, which was published in spring 2004 by MIT Press.

Best of 2004: 13 critics curators look at the year in art