neurosis

[noo͡-ro´sis] (pl. neuro´ses)

former name for a category of mental disorders characterized by anxiety and avoidance behavior. In general, the term has been used to refer to disorders in which the symptoms are distressing to the person, reality testing does not yield unusual results, behavior does not violate gross social norms, and there is no apparent organic etiology. Such disorders are currently classified as anxiety disorders, dissociative disorders, mood disorders, sexual disorders, and somatoform disorders.

anxiety neurosis an obsolete term (Freud) for conditions now reclassified as panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder.

hysterical neurosis a former classification of mental disorders, now divided into conversion disorder and dissociative disorders.

obsessive-compulsive neurosis former name for obsessive-compulsive disorder.

prison neurosis chronophobia occurring in prisoners having trouble adjusting to a long prison sentence, characterized by feelings of restlessness, panic, anxiety, and claustrophobia.

transference neurosis a phenomenon occurring in most psychoanalyses, in which the patient undergoes, with the analyst as the object, an intense repetition of childhood conflicts, reexperiencing impulses, feelings, and fantasies that originally developed in relation to the parent.

chro·no·pho·bi·a

(kron'ō-fō'bē-ă),

Morbid fear of the duration or immensity of time.

Farlex Partner Medical Dictionary © Farlex 2012

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References in periodicals archive

When focusing on Nabokov's Ada in "Writing: Nabokov," Hagglund maintains that Nabokov's writing also demonstrates chronophobia:

On the contrary, it is because one desires a temporal being (chronophilia) that one fears losing it (chronophobia).

Dying For Time: Proust, Woolf, And Nabokov

She is currently completing Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960s, forthcoming from MIT Press early next year.

Best of 2003: what were the brightest lights during the past year in art? We asked eleven of our regular contributors to take a look back

The author of Object to Be Destroyed: The Work of Gordon Matta-Clark (MIT Press, 1999) and co-author of Drawing Is Another Kind of Language (Harvard University Press, 1997), the catalogue for a traveling show of modern American works on paper, Lee is currently completing Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960s, forthcoming from MIT Press early next year.

Christian Marclay: UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

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