Actual neuroses

The discovery of the endorphins, a family of distinctive endogenous peptides possessing opiate-like activity, which appear to play a central role in the regulation of pain and other vegetative functions, prompted several investigations in animals and in man as to their possible role in stress phenomena. Several different strategies have been employed: Measurement of concentrations and release of endorphins in different brain areas, measurement of pain sensitivity and of different behavioral variables of animals before and after stress stimuli (with and without the application of the specific opiate antagonist naloxone), measurement of actual levels of endorphins in CSF and plasma of patients with different types of neuroses and psychoses...

A comprehensive and unitary psychoanalytic approach must acknowledge the importance of the so-called 'contentless mental state' of mounting psychic tensions. These states, once called the actual neuroses, are probably always further elaborated in fantasy. Once these states are endowed with meaning through free association and the joint constructive efforts of analyst and analysand, they may also be drawn into the orbit of neurotic conflict, if they have not already been drawn in by the patient alone, and then they may be dealt with analytically in connexion with the components of compromise formations which have interpretable meaning...

BZD may have some temporary palliative value in reducing anxiety over the short-term, but have not yet been shown to be of lasting value for neuroses either on their own or with any form of psychotherapy. When the drug is withdrawn, at best the effects do not persist and at worst there are severe side effects after withdrawal. 3 controlled studies of diazepam have been completed in phobics having exposure. In two of these there was a slight temporary gain when diazepam was combined with exposure, but the only study to have followup found that this gain dissipated within a month...

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A population of not selected patients of a psychotherapeutic ambulance was described and researched exactly in its typical character of actual degree of disease made by organic symptoms, of experience of self-confidence and experience of the context of social relations. 25% of patients were found to be sound. The neurotic patients significantly differed in experiences of former social relationship. Patients suffering from disturbed self-confidence and disturbed social relationship frequently described disorders in relation to their mothers...

Personality characteristics, and premorbid and actual mental states were studied in 130 male coronary patients suffering from anginal attacks. Psychasthenic, stenotic and rigid personalities prevailed in the examined sample. At the same time, 69.6% of patients showed unbalanced personality manifested in character accentuation (58.2%) and psychopathy (11.4%). Mental changes (neurotic reactions and neuroses) were first recorded well in advance of coronary symptoms in 72.4% of the patients. They were usually found in unbalanced personalities and grew worse after the onset of first signs of coronary insufficiency...

In this article the authors propose: 1) a typology of drug addiction cases consisting of four main classes: A. traumatic drug addiction, B. drug addiction from actual neuroses, C. transitional drug addiction, and D. sociopathic drug addiction; 2) a clinical study (with 18 months of follow-up data) involving 131 heroin addicts mostly treated with structural or counterparadoxical family therapy in the same psychotherapy center and in the same year; and 3) some preliminary conclusions emerging from an examination of the four-class typology with respect to the effectiveness of family therapy interventions...

A patient, during the course of a lengthy analysis, experienced several panic attacks. These regressive episodes, occurring only in the analytic setting, provided her with her special means for recalling and eventually mastering repressed elements of her life. This facilitating aspect of her disorganization, when identified and analyzed as such, helped deepen the patient's analytic experience. It was necessary for the analyst to define verbally and clarify her reconstructed past as it emerged as part of her panic state, transferentially, so that the patient could finally recognize, acknowledge, and understand hitherto hidden aspects of her life...

Mnestic functions were studied in 220 senile patients with neuroses, neurosis-like vascular disorders, endogenous depression, initial vascular psycho-organic syndrome. In senile functional psychic disorders a secondary affect-bound reduction of short-term memory was detected. Dynamic (affect-related) components could be shown as parts of initial vasculogenic psycho-organic syndrome. Relieving these affective disorders and asthenia was conductive to evaluation of the true degree of partially reversible mnestic disorders...

A total of 266 of 331 neurotics included to controlled comparison of further course and outcome of three therapeutic and preventive programmes of different duration of the contact with therapeutic environment (full inpatient, day center and walk-in clinic treatment) was reexamined 11 years after inclusion to the core (N = 239) and verification (N = 92) study. Results of multivariate analysis of relations between the characteristic of the episode of inclusion and seven criteria of further course and outcome follow-up confirmed the previous (6 and 12 months' follow-up) statements of no relationship neither between the type of the programme, the patient has been randomly assigned to, nor between the duration of the contacts with the therapeutic environment and with further course and outcome of the neurosis...

In 10 patients with definite forms of neurosis, controlphysiologic and biorhythmometric investigations were carried out to establish the effectiveness of diazepam therapy. After acute application of 10 mg diazepam, an increase in the degree of minute-rhythmic coupling correlated positively with a decrease of the control area, of the time adjustment of the heart rate after load-related deflection, and with an increase in a derived complex parameter of control quality. Chronic therapy with diazepam reversed the positive tendency of the biorhythmometric and control parameters...

The content of the concept of neurosis has been subject to repeated change in the course of scientific development, the collective term being still used to describe etiopathogenetically different disease pictures. Leading G.D.R. psychotherapists, in the interest of mutual understanding, have decided to narrow down the term "neurosis" and use it only to describe biographically derivable and psychoreactively produced and sustained disorders of the person-environment relation, thus acting in conformity with the present state of knowledge and following a recent international trend...

Beard's concept of neurasthenia and Freud's concept of the actual neuroses are described and evaluated critically. Despite differences in the content of their theories, especially in the role of sexual factors and sexual mechanisms, there are important formal and logical similarities. Both Beard and Freud incorrectly identified the causes of the neuroses being studied; both used inadequate methods of assessing the strengths of the causal factors; and the central theoretical concepts of both were equally vacuous...

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