Why neurosis is hard to treat
One of the main differences between psychosis and neurosis is that psychosis is a mental condition (like schizophrenia) which is defined by a "break" from reality- the person with psychosis loses touch with what is real and what is not. Further, the person doesn't know they have lost touch. For example, they might have hallucinations, hear things, believe people are following them, believe themselves to be all-powerful or all-weakened. They often talk to themselves in an imaginary world, etc.
However neurosis is a bit more tricky to define. It is a mental condition whereby the victim knows that their behavior and beliefs are abnormal or not "rational" but the belief and behavior persist anyways. A classic form of neurosis is obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Another form of this might be something like a mild psychosomatic disorder (one "feels" like something is wrong, even though rationally, they "know" nothing could have actually changed). What is interesting about neurosis in particular is it is much harder to convey to someone who does not suffer from it.
Here is a scenario:
Every time you do an action (let's say send an email) and use a parenthesis in the email like this (), you believe that your brain only functions at half capacity as it would otherwise function. In other words, for this person, right when they send an email that contains a parenthesis, they feel their cognitive capacity has diminished and they cannot function at their work, their social life, nor daily living at the "normal" capacity that they felt prior to this event. The only way to get rid of this feeling is to repeat the same exact email but restructure it without the parenthesis. Once they have done this compulsion, they immediately get rid of the "stupid feeling" and their mind goes back to full capacity. The person was well aware that this makes no rational sense, and that physiologically, except for perhaps adrenaline of feeling "triggered" (that might actually be causing the diminished cognitive feeling), there is no real change. It was simply OCD coupled with a psychosomatic feeling that has a very immediate and negative impact for that person.
Now, someone who does not suffer from this neurosis would find this odd. No matter how much the person afflicted with this condition would explain it, the other people would just be perplexed at how this otherwise rational person would be feeling. For a vast majority not afflicted with a neurosis, indeed a neurotic disorder would seem very alien. They might even have more empathy for a fully psychotic person, as even though they may not understand the person, their break from reality is so strong, that it can be chalked up to that person having a severe mental breakdown. The neurotic person suffers nonetheless, and sometimes on a minute-by-minute basis, but people may have less understanding or empathy for this person, as their break doesn't look like a normal "break", but more of a manifestation of odd behaviors on an otherwise "well-adjusted" seeming fellow. Also note, for the neurotic person, they also full-well know what they are doing seems crazy and irrational.
Thus, I see the person with neurosis to often slip through the cracks of society, suffering silently. It would mean they are isolated, not understood, and perpetually in their own world. Most people throw out terms like "see someone", "cognitive-behavioral therapy", "medications", etc. Much of these are external ways of trying to deal with something that is very idiosyncratic and internal to the person who is experiencing the condition.
Perhaps @Bitter Crank has something interesting to add?
However neurosis is a bit more tricky to define. It is a mental condition whereby the victim knows that their behavior and beliefs are abnormal or not "rational" but the belief and behavior persist anyways. A classic form of neurosis is obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Another form of this might be something like a mild psychosomatic disorder (one "feels" like something is wrong, even though rationally, they "know" nothing could have actually changed). What is interesting about neurosis in particular is it is much harder to convey to someone who does not suffer from it.
Here is a scenario:
Every time you do an action (let's say send an email) and use a parenthesis in the email like this (), you believe that your brain only functions at half capacity as it would otherwise function. In other words, for this person, right when they send an email that contains a parenthesis, they feel their cognitive capacity has diminished and they cannot function at their work, their social life, nor daily living at the "normal" capacity that they felt prior to this event. The only way to get rid of this feeling is to repeat the same exact email but restructure it without the parenthesis. Once they have done this compulsion, they immediately get rid of the "stupid feeling" and their mind goes back to full capacity. The person was well aware that this makes no rational sense, and that physiologically, except for perhaps adrenaline of feeling "triggered" (that might actually be causing the diminished cognitive feeling), there is no real change. It was simply OCD coupled with a psychosomatic feeling that has a very immediate and negative impact for that person.
Now, someone who does not suffer from this neurosis would find this odd. No matter how much the person afflicted with this condition would explain it, the other people would just be perplexed at how this otherwise rational person would be feeling. For a vast majority not afflicted with a neurosis, indeed a neurotic disorder would seem very alien. They might even have more empathy for a fully psychotic person, as even though they may not understand the person, their break from reality is so strong, that it can be chalked up to that person having a severe mental breakdown. The neurotic person suffers nonetheless, and sometimes on a minute-by-minute basis, but people may have less understanding or empathy for this person, as their break doesn't look like a normal "break", but more of a manifestation of odd behaviors on an otherwise "well-adjusted" seeming fellow. Also note, for the neurotic person, they also full-well know what they are doing seems crazy and irrational.
Thus, I see the person with neurosis to often slip through the cracks of society, suffering silently. It would mean they are isolated, not understood, and perpetually in their own world. Most people throw out terms like "see someone", "cognitive-behavioral therapy", "medications", etc. Much of these are external ways of trying to deal with something that is very idiosyncratic and internal to the person who is experiencing the condition.
Perhaps @Bitter Crank has something interesting to add?
Comments (50)
However, it could be that neurosis isn't really a problem. People manage to take it in their stride and it doesn't cause personal or social disruptions to the degree warranting treatment or intervention.
These are all irrational behaviors that if not carried out give people anxiety. The different is that they are 'understood' and 'expected' by the various cultures or subcultures. One can see the neuroticness in big cities, say on the subway, where a bunch of different subcultures intermingle. There you will see people conforming to a wide variety of norms that look entirely differently, inlcude different ways of speaking, dressing, coiffing, standing, moving...and most of those people would feel extreme anxiety if they did not do all these things 'right'.
I would conclude that we have cultural neuroses and not only do these cause people stress, they are further used to ostracise people and create random hierarchies, and then they cost a lot of money, especially with clothes, the 'right car', trophy houses.........
I agree. It's just that cultural practices are excluded from neurosis as a diagnosis, just like belief in god is excluded from the definition of a delusion. If this isn't done then everyone is neurotic which makes neurosis-normal a pointless distinction to make.
Right now in the US we have 80 million people on psychotropic meds. I certainly don't want to increase diagnosis to medication type paths, but we are already via psychiatry/pharma and the pathologization of emotions blurring the normal/pathological boundary.
I notice where we do not do this, and I think we avoid doing it around power and corporate use of anxiety.
There's an opportunity to empower people here. Right now neurosis and many other diagnoses are used to disempower people.
I wonder though which choice is the correct one?
1. Call everyone neurotic (collective neurosis)
or
2. Call everyone normal
I personally don't have a preference but there is sense in maintaining the distinction between neuroses and normalcy. It, apart from giving psychiatrists something to do, helps some overcome by neurotic traits to seek help and get treatment.
As for collective neurosis it's important to be aware of it as it gives valuable insight on the human condition - sort of like an epiphany.
It might also have a soothing effect on neurotics, when they start to see that 'normal' people act like they do, but it is considered normal because large groups share neuroses. I would guess that what we now call neuroses have a lot to do with modern culture, the detachment from nature, lack of meaningful work, lack of meaningful physical activity, and collective neuroses also. IOW we pathologize individuals when their anxiety is probably in large part more of a sociological event. Now critics of my position will say there are genetic factors. No doubt. But here's the thing: all that indicates is that some people are genetically more reactive to modern society's faults and lacks. Just because some people react in certain ways gets, as a rule, diagnosed and pathologized, in a sense as we used diagnose gays. They are a minority, so their difference is pathologial and we can call it a disease. But minority reactions to
the way things currently are..
may very well just be normal, but further out on the bell curve, reactions to problems in the society.
Now I am being polemical here. I don't really know what happens if we start viewing the categor of behaviors I called collective neuroses as neuroses. I don't know for sure what underlies much more modern humans anxiety and depression.
I think https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Connections-Uncovering-Depression-Unexpected/dp/163286830X
makes an excellent case that our problems are much more to do, in general, with our situations, and further that these can be changed on an individual and even societal level and without drugs and without pathologizing people and emotions.
So I would like to pathologize norms, for a while, and depathologize emotions, because emotions are being heartily pathologized in our society. Of course they always have been, but now technologies are coming in to crush them..
I hope we're on the same page?
Manipulating the masses is feasible with collective neuroses.
You make an excellent point, broadening the scope of neuroses to include groups, even entire cultures.
I don't know if the term "neuorsis" is the best for this view on the collective though. Can we diagnose an entire culture to be sick?
etymology
And there are people who do not buy the collective neuroses in most cultures and subcultures. There can be tremendous pressure, economic, peer, parental, religious to be neurotic, but often one can manage to at least minimize one's neurotic conformism. There is often a cost however.
Then you said Quoting Coben
That tells a different story and that "neurosis" may not be the right term to apply here.
Quoting Coben
Then you said the above which again looks like you're trying to criticize cultural norms as an illness and that we should resist or defy them but at a cost.
We could say that collective neurosis applies to those social norms that can be used to exploit/harm us. You mentioned things like "right car" and it makes sense: Our desire to conform to a social standard makes us do irrational and, sometimes, harmful things. Is drug-abuse in children and young adults a collective neurosis?
Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War of Drugs
is also an incredible read. I can't recommend it enough. Pretty much everything we have been told about drug abuse is not correct.
Just one thing I'd like you to consider. What if these neuroses are necessary in the sense that besides the harmful effects of spreading unhealthy anxiety it also serves as a vehicle for the good stuff? You mentioned the rockstar drug-abuse archetype and while I agree this is harmful for children who then think drugs are cool, I also wonder whether drugs were necessary for the artist/rockstar to convey an important useful message about music/art.
You did say: Quoting Coben
Could it be that collective neurosis is a necessary evil - unifying society through establishing common cultural norms but, unfortunately, also providing a window of opportunity to unhealthy anxiety-causing cultural practices/norms/standards?
Even if such is the case it's sensible to be aware of collective neurosis as it allows us to adopt the good and eschew the bad. All I'm saying is that both the good and bad maybe using the same access point in our minds and therefore collective neurosis is unavoidable but definitely manageable to some extent.
I doubt that for the person experiencing it. But yes, someone can be "riddled" with neurotic behaviors and thoughts and live a daily life. But clearly that life is not optimal for the person experiencing it. My point was that it may even be more so as they are living in a double world of having the irrational belief/behavior but also knowing that they have it.
Although I agree with you, in spirit, how enculturation and mass media can shape cultural expectations and cause widespread anxieties, I do not think this shaping of culture or these anxieties are the same a person with an actual neurotic disorder. First off, in order for something to be a disorder, it has to be a major disruption to their life. It has to affect how one functions at things like work or social interactions. It has to be pervasive. It has to be something that one cannot simply walk away from and turn on and off. An example would be let's say that for someone who was simply "anal" about how their desk was organized, they might prefer it to be neat and tidy. Someone with an actual neurosis like OCD would have something like exact spots where things need to be. If they do not put something in that pattern or place, they think about it the whole day, they preseverate, they can't think clearly. In other words, they obsess. They feel a compulsion to go back and put it in the "right" place or pattern. That is an actual neurosis. To generalize it to how culture shapes anxieties would be to muddy the definition and significance of an actual neurosis with cultural practices.
I don't think it has much to do with normality, per se. Rather, someone with a neurotic disorder is believing or doing something they rather not do. It interrupts their thought process and ways of being that might otherwise take place without the disorder. In other words, a neurosis is not simply a different way of doing something that can be seen externally by others, but they themselves experience and can usually report the negative impact of the neurosis and would like it to not negatively impact them anymore.
Maybe you set the bar so high that practically no one will be able to accomplish this so-called optimal life. I guess a difference between being realistic and being idealistic.
Let me get you in a mindset then of the neurotic person...
The "average" person may close a door. They may check the handle and turn it to make sure it is locked. They go their merry way.
The "neurotic" person (this case OCD) may have something where they lock the door 4 times. If they lock it 3 or 5 times, they feel X sensation (in the moment) or they believe Y belief will happen (in the future. This present sensation or this belief about the future causes extreme anxiety and other sub-optimal experiences (not thinking clearly, extreme fear, hypochondria, etc.). The trigger of 3 or 5 (not the "right" number) has nothing to even do with the door itself being locked.. it's just that those numbers have "magical" or "superstitious" value for the neurotic person.. They cannot shake off the anxiety of not repeating the act without thinking that something bad is happening or will happen to that person. If they lock the door 3 or 5 times and then leave, they are wrought with anxiety, fear, delusions, irrational beliefs, etc. However, if they go back and repeat the sequence four times, the feeling immediately goes away. This is not something the person wants to feel or have to repeat, but they feel it and repeat it nonetheless. That is what I mean by not optimal.
The people with the disorders have trouble primarily contained to their own suffering, and then on their family members. Collective neuroses also detrimentally affect people who are many degrees of separation from the individual sufferers. IOW you can be immune to the meme aspects of the collective neurosis in question but still suffer.
Quoting schopenhauer1It's an interesting combination of something that is an anxiety disorder with a self-medication aspect. If they were not allowed to engage in the behaviors that, say, the corporations have suggested solve the problem, they would have more of the full blown disorder. IOW the symptoms would be much more visible.Quoting schopenhauer1I don't think most people can walk away from these patterns. To move outside what they consider important norms creates trememdous anxiety and likely depression also. And further they will often be socially and even professionally punished for moving away.Quoting schopenhauer1This section reminded me directly of mobile use, in general, and then also the specifics of social media participation. So ritual interaction with the object, with surfing, that the object has been checked, is nearby and then all the rituals of self-presentation of likeing the right things of getting liked for comments and the ongoing anxiety around all this. Again, since the activity does have a self-medication aspect, the disorder is less obvious than some of the disorders.Quoting schopenhauer1Again, mobile use, but also hair style, make up, the way emotions need to be actively suppressed, certainly not expressed, and any let downs in this last, need to be 'explained' and 'reframed' and made up for.
Of course the neurosis sufferer - they no longer use neurosis in psychiatry, but I'll keep using the term since it has been used since the OP - tend not to have the additional anxiety about their oddness. They are not insiders, since having these collective neuroses makes one an insider. An OCD sufferer IS going to be judged. They will feel a sense of stigma, in addition to the underlying anxiety driving them. Cultural neuroses are based on anxiety creation - and consistent threat - with a way out. You conform. So there isn't the additional meta-anxiety of the disorder sufferer.
Many of the traditionally diagnosed can control their symptoms and function quite well on medication. Most of the collectively neurotic since the very pattern includes a self-medication aspect, can control their symptoms and function quite well.
Should the quite unlikely happen and I can convince many people that this is all correct, the ocd sufferer, for example, will still be able to receive treatment for his or her disorder. They might, potentially, feel a bit less shame, as they realize that normal people have similar patterns, though perhaps to a lesser degree. And then those with power who create these collective neuroses, will be challenged in a new and different way.
Tragically, I can not congratulate you for being the first person to use "Lilliput" on the Philosophy forum. You did not capitalize this proper noun, and you misspelled it in two ways -- it has two 'L's and there is only one Lilliput. It's a place, like Tierra del Fuego. What you were reaching for and failed to grasp was "Lilliputians", the 6" high occupants of Lilliput. It's so painful.
If you stay after school and write "Lilliputians live in Lilliput" 100 times on the blackboard you will make me feel better. By the way, Gulliver's Travels have been previously referenced.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I would, but I'm having a neurotic crisis. It's TheMadFool's fault -- he misspelled Lilliput. Everything was just fine until I noticed his egregious error. Had he spelled it correctly, or had I not noticed his post I would not be so terribly mentally disheveled right now.
This trauma will require bed rest. It's 12:52 a.m., so a good time to retire.
:rofl: I got tired of fighting with my phone's auto-correct. Thanks though.
However there are cases of severe neuroses requiring treatment but I endorse the view that, in general, neuroses are simple quirks in personality than anything debilitative.
But this is exactly the type of dismissive understanding I'm talking about. Neurosis, for the sufferer, is debillitative, it is just not as externally observable. But internally the sufferer is silently keeping themselves together. That's not to say this isn't a spectrum, but as you were saying, it's like an iceberg where people only see maybe a few odd behaviors. A lot of it is silent to others, but very present internally for the sufferer.
I think it is also interesting because I wonder if tribal societies manifest "OCD" as superstitions and sufferers of OCD in this society might be celebrated as "medicine men" in some tribal societies.
Probably nothing very helpful.
There is a distinction between "neurosis" and "neuroticism", the former affecting one's life more than the latter. Also, "neurosis" is more of a psychoanalytic term than a medical one.
Speaking for my self, I have experienced neurosis (depression, anxiety) and have had a fairly high level of neuroticism. For the last 8 years, I have experienced a sharp shift away from neuroticism. I have become less irritable, more tolerant, less anxious, more contented. I have felt much less depressed and anxious, but whether that is a result of declining neuroticism or effective medication, isn't clear.
Neurosis or neuroticism... The difference doesn't matter that much. There is certainly a difference between the major psychoses (like bi-polar disorder or schizophrenia) and merely neurotic habits. Needing to check the stove, the faucets, the locked door, and the lights several times before one can leave the house is annoying to one's self (and others) but it is hardly life-threatening. Dealing with mild OCD isn't that difficult; more entrenched and severe OCD can be difficult to overcome.
Whether neurotic behavior, or neuroticism, rises to the the definition of "mental illness" or not, it is a significant factor in life outcomes. Isolation, depression, anxiety, high levels of emotional arousal (like anger) indirectly affect longevity, physical health, productivity, relationships, and so on.
I view personality as a combination of genetic determined traits, traits developed from infancy on up, shaped by good and/or bad experiences, given form by one's embodiment, one's milieu, and so on. By the time one reaches adulthood, the personality one has become is pretty much fixed. It has not hardened like concrete, but it isn't soft reshapeable clay, either.
If one can make significant changes in one's personality, I don't think it can be done without substantial changes in one's environment. IF one's family or relationship is a very negative factor, then an exit from that family or relationship is probably necessary. IF work is driving one crazy (bad jobs can do that) then one needs to leave that job. A well-trained and skilled therapist will be helpful, and therapy should have a long duration--like a year or 50 hours.
"Therapy means change, not adjustment." The difficulty shouldn't be soft-pedaled. It's hard, and it might take a crisis-kind of event to make the changes.
Yes, I understand the distinction. I am talking about neurosis not a neurotic personality.
Yeah, I think checking the stove a few times is one thing- it's when it gets irrational. Checking the stove a couple times is still tied to some rational outcome because the stove may actually cause damage if left on. What about if someone parks a car, but the tire has to be "just right" when it is parked. It is perfectly in the space, but the tire itself has to be a quarter inch to the right. If it isn't, the afflicted person will think about it all day. They cannot think about anything else. Then they go and move it, but each time, they are not hitting the "right" for tire placement. Either the person gives up and deals with the obsession internally, or they keep compulsing and manifest it externally. They may stop the compulsion but then they deal with the internal negative state. They give in and do the compulsion, they are are feeding the feedback loop and associating the ending of the negative feeling with the compulsion. Again, these are afflictions which are not as noticeable but cause considerable disruption.
I read the wikipedia article on neurosis and I was wrong but not completely wrong about what neurosis is.
[quote=Wikpedia]Neurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving chronic distress but neither delusions nor hallucinations.
Neurosis should not be mistaken for psychosis, which refers to a loss of touch with reality.
The definitive symptom is anxiety.
In Horney's view, mild anxiety disorders and full-blown personality disorders all fall under her basic scheme of neurosis as variations in the degree of severity and in the individual dynamics.The opposite of neurosis is a condition Horney calls self-realization, a state of being in which the person responds to the world with the full depth of his or her spontaneous feelings
Horney compares this process to an acorn that grows and becomes a tree: the acorn has had the potential for a tree inside it all along.
[/quote]
From what I read it appears that neurosis is a maladjustment to reality and anxiety results when the world doesn't satisfy the needs of a distorted self-image.
Also you'll notice that Horney compares the neurotic to an acorn that can become a tree i.e. retains the potential for what she describes as self-realization. In my world that means neurosis isn't such a bad thing to have compared to, say, schizophrenia. I think the better way of putting it would be neurosis is the least worst of many possible mental illnesses we can be afflicted by.
This doesn't mean that the suffering of neurotics can be ignored. It just means that there are other mental illnesses where the suffering is more. In terms of resource allocation we can see what that means - the neurotic is quite low on the priority list.
[quote=Wikpedia]The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) eliminated the category "neurosis" in 1980, because of a decision by its editors to provide descriptions of behavior rather than descriptions of hidden psychological mechanisms. This change has been controversial[/quote]
It appears that the psychiatrists don't want to bother themselves with unprovable theories of how neurosis develops and just want to focus on observable behavior patterns like anxiety, OCD, phobias, etc. and how to treat them. It's a more scientific approach given that explaining the origins of neuroses is a shot in the dark. Nevertheless it violates a principle of medicine - that we treat the cause and not the symptoms.
I don't know what all fits into the category of neuroses these days. I guess depression, anxiety, OCD, phobias, compulsions, etc. I've never understood what "borderline personality disorder" was -- is that counted as a neurosis?
"Neurosis" may be an obsolete word, but it seems to me useful to describe the set of screwy ideas that many people haul around, especially the self-defeating ideas, beliefs, habits, etc. that cause some people to fail again and again at projects that are well within their reach. (I know first hand of what I speak.) I've failed at a lot of stuff that was well within my operational capability.
Can you link to something that supports this idea? I think this would actually support my thesis. If a pattern that causes suffering in one culture leads on to a position of authority in another culture, then ti makes parallels between what I have been calling collective neuroses and neurosis as traditionallly defined more likely.
I am skeptical that medicine men are sufferers of OCD, however.
This raises an interesting question. What is normal? After all the whole panoply of mental disorders is defined as deviations from the normal.
That OCD or other neurotic patients being celebrated as medicine men is true in some backward societies. Actually why stop at neurosis because presumably a medicine man, claiming all sorts of supernatural abilities, is psychotic. The proviso here is that this may not be entirely accurate. Think of Christians or Muslims or Jews. They're all normal people but to atheists, are suffering a delusion, a hallmark of schizophrenia. As you can see religious people are definitely NOT schizophrenic and their beliefs are simply cultural hand-me-downs. It's not a believer's fault/madness that s/he believes. You might want to look into that.
Also, what of the genius or hyper-intelligent person? Discoveries and innovations are usually the work of one or a few individual(s). Take planes for example. The man/woman who talks of flight in 1000 BC will surely be labeled insane and immediately sent to the asylum. Yet air transport is a reality today. I guess I'm saying that there's a very very, almost imperceptible, line between genius and madness. In effect this questions the very rationale of normal. In fact I think may great artists and scientists were/are neurotic.
I maybe a poor neurotic anxious, suffering, alone and sad in the 20th century but a great pioneering visionary in the 22nd century.
I don't agree with everything I will quote Thomas Szasz on below, but your post made me think of his, and I thought he brings a bit to the thread as a whole.....
Sometimes this can get quite severe..Think people like Howard Hughes. Let's take OCD again.. Imagine that every you did X arbitrary (but overvalued) triggering event, you felt Y (psychosomatic) affect. So every time you mistakenly hit something with your left hand, the whole rest of the day you felt mentally impaired, like you cannot access your own memory or cognitive capacities to reason. Your whole mind seems to slow down. However, if you immediately hit the object with your right hand, your brain goes back to functioning normally. Let's say this triggering event happens frequently throughout the day. This will become mentally taxing for that person.
People on the outside, might not even realize what's going on. Even if the person was to explain it to others or even a therapist, the experience would be so alien to them, it would be hard to find a solution that properly fits the internal world of the patient. The therapist would have no idea what it really feels like to go through the angst of having a diminished mental capacity based on some triggering event. They might say to just let the feeling ride out without compusling but then the person is "stuck" in that mode for the whole day.. possibly not wearing off and impeding the immediate tasks at hand. These are the reasons neurosis is quite tricky. It is the alieness of the idiosyncratic, internal feeling of the sufferer and the inability for others to really understand this world and thus to help them. They don't even really understand what's going on internally. There is a disconnect of the world of the OCD afflicted person and the people that are observing and listening to them on the outside. And, since each OCD sufferer might have a different manifestation, it is even that much harder as the nuances of each world is different. This is probably why people with more traditional forms of OCD would be more easily treated- people with religious scrupulosity, people who wash their hands a certain number of times, etc. The more individualized, different, and delusional the obsession/symptom, the more isolating, and harder to understand and treat from those on the outside.
No I can't. This was just an idea I had. Do tribal people suffer neuroses like OCD? If so, is it just treated differently by those people?
Ha, I would say we must separate personality-types from idiosyncratic and self-evaluated negative patterns. Someone like a Tesla for example was a bit "out there" with his ideas.. but a lot of them were spot on true for how electricity can be harnessed. That perhaps is a personality-related thing. However, he also seemed to have an actual neurotic disorder of OCD. He counted things in three, he was germaphobic. These are like mental baggage that impeded perhaps his abilities socially, and certainly took up mental space. I would guess even Tesla would not have wanted to deal with them.
It's just a hypothesis, but if you read the verbs they mention one can see how they might benefit the group.
Oh, I really like that one! That is an interesting idea to explore- is OCD a maladaptive version of what might have been beneficial in the adaptionary setting in more limited capacities. It's an overabundance of traits that if balanced, were necessary for survival. Someone with a tendency for precision, counting, hoarding could have been useful. This trait taken too far and in the wrong setting can be deleterious to the person who has this trait.
Good point. But that's not the whole experience of OCD. It's when one is caught in an aggressive loop that this now has no positive impact for the individual. There's people who take the phrase literally, "step on a crack and break your mother's back". You think that's balanced? They persistently find a pattern to "undo" the stepping on the crack as this might cause future harm for someone. Living with this anxiety of "changing the world" is too stressful to overcome the compulsion to go back and "not" step on the cracks in the right pattern.
Brains turn repeated behavior into habits, strongly followed practices, rote behaviors, and so on. It isn't just us -- it happens to other animals too. Domestic animals develop habits that can become minor problems -- the dog's insistence that a snack be handed to her in a certain way, and no other way. Typing is a very rigid habit -- so rigid that one can feel an error in one's fingers (if one does enough of it). Back when the telegraph was an important communication tool, operators could identify each other by the way their hands operated the equipment. This was useful during WWII when intelligence officers listened to radio-telegraph transmission from German-occupied countries: the identity of the telegraph operator was recognizable by the habitual way the telegraph key was operated.
So maybe it isn't surprising that habit prone brains sometimes go overboard and turn habits into compulsions.
I'm not sure what tips a habit (checking to make sure the stove is off, the car is locked...) into a compulsion; I suppose it is stress. We experience stress when many aspects of our lives start becoming unhinged. Too much chaos; too many unpredictable events happening; disturbing events popping up all over the place. Establishing a secure zone (one's apartment) by multiple checks to make sure everything is OK when one leaves relieves stress a bit, so the checking becomes fixed.
I think stress is a huge factor, but more in the fact that it magnifies the compulsive affects that are already there in the OCD person. For example, a job interview would most likely increase the symptoms as now there is something at stake and things have to be done a certain way to ensure it. But, the initial compulsion might come from uncertainty. So let us say that the OCD person took the spoon from the drawer and used it to scoop sugar in a cup of coffee.. He did not stir the coffee with the spoon. There is no residual sugar on the spoon either (maybe microscopic grain or two). The person used the handle of the spoon but did not touch the spoon part itself. The person deems 50/50 to put back or in the washing machine. He puts it in washing machine. He goes to other room. Now he obsesses that was the wrong move. The right move was the drawer. But maybe it was too used.. But either way, the logic is long gone, and now it is simply an angsty residual feeling. The idea of the spoon being put in "wrong" place is all prevading and hours go by with this feeling. Finally, the person moves the spoon. It didn't work and tries another combination..wash the spoon manually then use again, then wash again, then put in drawer. You can see how this initial feeling of uncertainty started the whole thing, even if that was long ago not the issue at stake anymore but what to do with the "wrong decision" that was made.
I am quite certain that OCD is real and can be disabling, but an interesting aspect of most mental illnesses is that most of the features of MI are manifested in mild form by people who are not, by any definition, mentally disturbed. OCD is a good example. Take your spoon: you have to decide what to do with it. I've had to pause to think about it -- is the spoon I measured baking powder with still clean, or not? The answer is an irrational "no". How about the tops of canned food; after using the can opener on them, some of the juice gets on top of the can, then runs back into the can. Oh oh, is that still clean?
Some of us have scarcely conscious obsessions about 'ritualistic purity', superstitions about what can be touched by what. One sees this in young children, sometimes -- the potato can't touch the carrots on their plate. Children often dislike texture contrasts -- so horror of horrors, no shredded vegetables and chopped nuts mixed into the Jello. These superstitions can resemble the kosher rules of the ultra-orthodox--all sorts of restrictions.
I am annoyed at church events when someone collects the unused silverware from the tables and wants to put it back in the drawers. NO! NO! Look, it's been handled at least twice (putting it on the table, taking it off) and who the hell knows how many more times. Just run it through the wash. Same with glasses. Here comes somebody carrying glasses with their fingers inside the glasses saying they are clean. The machine is doing the washing, and it doesn't care if it has a few more to clean. I just follow the rule of "once touched, into the washing machine".
We make irrational exceptions to our cleanliness rules. We may worry if someone's hands were washed before slicing a loaf of bread, but aren't worried enough about cleanliness to prevent us from having sex with a stranger.
Point is, despite what we may think we are, we are pretty irrational, frequently given to thoughts and behaviors which do not pass muster as "rational", "reasonable", or "sensible".
Yes, this is a good observation. Much of the OCD symptoms are a spectrum, and even non MI people, might have a touch of it on the very weak part of the spectrum. It is these uncertainties that seem to be the birthing places for the more pronounced and actual MI manifestations.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Right so the uncertainty ground is already fertile in a "well-adjusted" mind let alone one prone to OCD. These uncertanties could be the start of OCD tendencies, though that's just a theory.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Agreed. So what to do about them?
We cope as well as we can. (Not much option, really.). I spent a number of years being somewhat dysfunctional. Not so dysfunctional that I couldn't work, but dysfunctional enough that I wasn't working close to standard. Dysfunctional enough that I was a problem to myself--hard to live with. I was fairly reckless for a time--not a good example of self-control and probity.
I took anti-depressants and Xanax or Ativan for decades. I received psychotherapy. I "coped" more or less. I never did find THE WAY to feel really good. But... I did get better, eventually. I can't claim credit because the relief came long after psychotherapy and I still take a low dose of antidepressant (Effexor). Maybe 8 or 9 years ago or so, I just started to feel a lot better. It wasn't anything I did that made it better. It was like a switch was thrown and all the sturm and drang evaporated.
If I could put whatever it was in a bottle and sell it, I would have a blockbuster drug. Alas.