Chapter 9. A Developmental Scheme: Toward Normality, Neurosis or other Forms of Disturbance

The diagram shown on page 78 is an attempt to approach the question of childhood disturbances, including childhood neuroses, from a developmental point of view. These earlier disturbances may finally result in any type of adult psychological disturbance or in so-called normality of adulthood.

The line of development which I have placed in the center of my presentation in this monograph is that leading to the adult neurosis1 after traversing the infantile neurosis and all the earliest forms of conflicts which will influence and shape the latter's development.

The attempt to follow specially the line of development leading to neurosis is somewhat artificial, because the personality structure of essentially neurotic patients—or perhaps I should say, predominantly neurotic patients—usually includes other forms and types of disturbance as well. These are of course present in different combinations in any given patient.

Several years ago I treated a patient suffering basically from a severe obsessional neurosis; in the structure of this patient's