Types of Onset of Neurosis

Editor's Note

Über Neurotische Erkrankungstypen

(a) German Editions:

1912  Zbl. Psychoan.,  2 (6),  297-302.

1913 S.K.S.N.,  3,  306-13.

1924 G.S.,  5,  400-8.

1943 G.W.,  8,  322-30.↗

(b English Translation:

‘Types of Neurotic Nosogenesis’ 1924 C.P.,  2,  113-21. (Tr. E. C. Mayne.)

The present translation, with a different title, is a new one by James Strachey.

This paper appeared in the March, 1912, issue of the Zentralblatt, It is an expansion of some remarks contained in a paragraph of the Schreber analysis (1911c), p. 61 f. above, and its theme is the classification of the precipitating causes of neurotic illnesses. Freud had, of course, often dealt with it before; but in his earlier writings the position was obscured by the prominence given in them to traumatic events. After he had more or less completely abandoned the trauma theory, his interest was largely focussed (e.g. in the ‘Summary’ at the end of the Three Essays (1905d), Standard Ed., 7, 235 ff.) on the various predisposing causes of neurosis. The precipitating causes are mentioned in one or two contemporary papers, but only in the most general and somewhat deprecating terms. (See, for instance, a paper on the aetiology of the neuroses (1906a), Standard Ed., 278-9.) It is true, however, that the notion of ‘deprivation’ (‘Entbehrung’) makes an occasional appearance, e.g. in ‘On Psychotherapy’ (1905a), Standard Ed., 267, but only in the sense of deprivation due to some external circumstance. The possibility of neurosis resulting from an internal obstacle to satisfaction emerges at a somewhat later date—in the paper, for instance, on the effects of ‘civilized’ morality (1908d)—perhaps, as Freud

suggests below (p. 233), under the impact of Jung's work. In the last-mentioned paper the term ‘Versagung (frustration)’ is used to describe the internal obstacle. It reappears, but this time with reference only to external obstacles, in the rather earlier Schreber analysis (1911c) (pp. 57 and 62 above), as well as