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The purpose of this communication is to differentiate neurotic and rational pessimism. Some theoretical formulations are presented to explain the genesis, maintenance, and recurrent appearance in exaggerated forms of neurotic pessimism. A number of trends identified with and subsumed under the term pessimism are brought together in related groupings. The trends are defined and clarified by case material citations. The relationship of neurotic pessimism and its components to the negative therapeutic reaction is discussed; A single case example of some length is included because it well illustrates many of the points emphasized throughout the paper.
We are concerned in this paper with neurotically determined and neurotically motivated pessimism. This is neurotic or irrational pessimism as differentiated from a rational or valid pessimism. Neurotic pessimism is not contrasted with normal pessimism because the notion normal pessimism appears to be a contradiction. Also the concept normal is confusing and leads to unclear thinking.
Irrational pessimism will have the characteristics by which we can identify any neurotic drive. In addition there will be manifested qualities peculiar to the pessimistic trend itself.
Neurotic pessimism is pervasive and indiscriminate. It infiltrates and colors all our thinking, feeling and acting without regard to reality. It is compulsively governed by unrealistic drives and illusions. It consumes the whole person. It is exaggerated out of context and is dramatized even to caricatured proportions. Irrational pessimism does not relate itself to time in a definitive manner. There is the feeling that everything was, is, and will be the unchanging same. In like manner when neurotic pessimism is in operation, there is an aversion to a consideration of reality or to being influenced