“Neurosis” is a general term used to describe various forms of mental disorders that involve symptoms of anxiety, depression, hysteria, phobia, and obsessive compulsiveness. The Scottish physician and researcher William Cullen ( 1710-1790) first used the term during the eighteenth century. At that time, a whole range of symptoms and diseases were referred to as neurotic and were thought to be organically based, with specific, localized points (for example, digestive neurosis). The Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) coined the term “psychoneurosis” to denote and describe his discovery that neurotic disorders do not have localized organic origins but are psychological in nature and caused by early emotional trauma, the results of which are psychological and emotional conflict.
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