Neuroses

Neuroses are relatively mild mental illnesses that are not caused by organic diseases, involving symptoms of stress but not a radical loss of touch with reality. Though the term neuroses is no longer used formally within the medical community, it is still a common umbrella term used for mental illnesses such as anxiety, pyromania, obsessive-compulsive disorder, hysteria, and phobias.

The work capacity of the nerve cells in the cerebral cortex is limited, so over-excitation, over-inhibition, or simultaneous overstimulation of both processes or their mobility may disrupt brain activity resulting in a neurosis.

Neuroses are characterized by anxiety, depression, or other feelings of unhappiness or distress that are out of proportion to the circumstances of a person’s life. They may impair a person’s functioning in virtually any area of his life, relationships, or external affairs, but they are not severe enough to incapacitate the person. Neurotic patients generally do not suffer from the loss of the sense of reality seen in persons with psychoses.

One of the common neuroses is anxiety. A person suffering from anxiety may experience feelings of apprehension, worry, and fear. Physical symptoms are also common with this form of neurosis, including nausea, palpitations, chest pains, and shortness of breath. The person may also experience elevated blood pressure and heart rate, sweating, pale skin, dilated pupils, and trembling. While some anxiety is normal in certain situations, such as when sad, angry, or afraid of a specific situation, those with this form of neurosis may experience anxiety for no known reason or for reasons that should not normally trigger that type of response.

Phobias, a type of anxiety disorder, are characterized by strong unreasonable fears of specific objects, people, situations, or activities. Some common objects of phobias are open or closed spaces, fire, high places, dirt, and bacteria.

Pyromania is another of the common neuroses. A person suffering from pyromania is fixated on fire. A pyromaniac is not the same as an arsonist, as a person suffering from pyromania gains a sense of happiness from fires, whereas an arsonist may set fire for revenge or for personal gain. In general, there are no other symptoms associated with this type of neurosis.

Another of the common neuroses is obsessive-compulsive disorder. Individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder generally suffer from intrusive, repetitive, and disturbing thoughts. In an attempt to rid themselves of these thoughts, they engage in certain rituals or tasks. Compulsive behaviour includes rituals such as repetitive hand washing or door locking. This leads to a cycle of thoughts and behaviors over which the person feels he or she has little or no control.

Somatoform disorders, which include the so-called hysterical, or conversion, neuroses, manifest themselves in physical symptoms, such as blindness, paralysis, or deafness that are not caused by organic disease. Hysteria is one of the common neuroses. A person suffering from hysteria experiences substantial feelings of fear or other emotions that he or she cannot seem to handle. Often, the fear is focused on an imagined illness or other problem of a specific body part. The person may lose all self-control as a result of the consuming fear.

Psychoneurotic disorders are formed in children more easily than in adults.

Exercise 5. Answer the questions to the text:

1. When may the brain activity be disrupted?

2. What are the most common symptoms of neuroses?

3. What is the principal difference between the neurotic patients and those with psychoses?

4. What physical symptoms are common in anxiety?

5. What do phobias mean?

6. What phobias do you know?

7. What do individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder generally suffer from?

8. What group of neuroses does hysteria belong to?

Exercise 6. Give English equivalents of the following word combinations:

Повна втрата зв’язку з реальністю; надмірна стимуляція діяльності головного мозку; невроз нав’язливих станів; розширені зіниці; бліда шкіра і тремтіння; відкритий чи замкнений простір; часте миття рук; нав’язлива поведінка; позбутися тривожних думок; проявлятися у фізичних симптомах; сліпота і глухота; зосередитися на уявних хворобах; втратити самоконтроль; всепоглинаючий страх.

Exercise 7. Find out the wrong use of words and change them by the proper ones:

1. Sweating, enlarged blood pressure, and trembling may not be caused by organic diseases.

2. The changes in the bones resulted from calcium insufficiency.

3. The normal palpitation of the adult is 72-80 beats per min.

4. Psychoneurotic disorders are relatively easy mental illnesses that are not caused by organic diseases.

5. He had to visit his dentist to extract an ill tooth.

6. Blindness, paralysis, and deafness are the often symptoms in hysteria.

7. Elevated heart rate, sweating, pale skin, increased pupils may be the manifestations of neuroses.

8. The neurotic persons can’t hand their emotions and feelings.

Exercise 8. Find out the grammar mistakes and correct them:

1. Children may to form serious neurotic disorders.

2. Neurosis is characterized by feelings of unhappiness or distress.

3. What kind of fears may experience persons with phobias?

4. A person’s functioning in virtually any area of his life may be impair by psychoneurotic disorders.

5. Does elevated blood pressure may be symptom of anxiety?

6. Persons with psychoses suffers from the loss of the sense of reality.

7. The patients, which suffer from conversion neuroses, may be focused on an imagined illness.

8. What do a pyromaniac gains a sense of happiness from?

Exercise 9. Put questions to the underlined words:

1. A person suffering from pyromania is fixated on fire.

2. The term neurosis was coined by the Scottish doctor William Cullen.

3. A person with an inborn strong type of nervous activity may become unbalanced or in active due to faulty upbringing.

4. William Cullen coined the term neurosis in 1769.

5. Neuroses impair a person’s functioning not enough to incapacitate the person.

6. The patient has been suffering from elevated blood pressure and heart rate, sweating, and trembling for three month.

7. Revealing the causes of neuroses will facilitate their rapid cure.

8. Over-excitation and over-inhibition of the cortex cells may influence the brain activity unfortunately.

9. Neurosis in children is most frequently observed at the age of 2 to 4, 7 to 8, and the period of puberty development.

10. When the causes of somatoform disorders are determined the neurotic symptoms will be controlled.

Exercise 10. Open the brackets:

1. The non-biological basis of neurosis (to maintain) with Sigmund Freud at the beginning of the psychoanalytic movement.

2. Carl Jung (to see) collective neuroses in politics: " Our world is, so to speak, dissociated like a neurotic".

3. Neurotic tendencies (to manifest) themselves as depression, acute or chronic anxiety, obsessive-compulsive tendencies, specific phobias.

4. The origin of the term hysteria commonly (to attribute (приписывать) to Hippocrates.

5. Hippocrates (to think) that the cause of hysteria was irregular movement of blood from the internal genitalia to the brain.

6. During the mid 19th century the term neurosis (to use) as a key to characterize disorders that (to be) neurological in origin.

7. Neurotic people (to tend) to have more negative feelings such as depression, anxiety, insecurity.

8. The prescribed anti-depressants (to take) by the end of the next month.

Exercise 11. a) Read about fears and phobias in famous people and tell about other similar facts you’ve heard:

George Washington, the first president of the United States of America, had a very serious fear of premature burial. This was clearly expressed on his deathbed, in 1799, where he made his attendants promise that his body would be left out for two days, in case he was still alive.

Woody Allen has taken fear to an extreme. The 74-year-old actor and screenwriter is afraid of practically everything. Although he has normal phobias that cause him to fear heights, enclosed spaces and insects, he also has more abnormal fears. Among his weirder terrors are fears of bright colours, animals, elevators and peanut butter sticking to the roof of his mouth!

Alfred Hitchcock, a famous Hollywood director and producer, had an extreme fear of eggs. He said that they are revolting (вызывают отвращение) to him! He stated that he never tasted an egg in his whole life, and he refused to even be around them.

Madonna’s always been a fearless femme fatale in our eyes. But even kickboxing, leather corset-wearing megastars are afraid of thunderstorms: Madonna is apparently a sufferer of brontophobia, the fear of thunder.

b) Make up sentences using the words in the right order:

1) Jennifer Aniston, all, a fear, Michael Jackson, and, Whoopi Goldberg, have, of flying.

2) The, excessive, 34^th, of, had, an, president, fear of hospitals, the United States, Richard Nixon.

3) the, Orlando Bloom, a, phobia, strange, actor, has, British, pigs, fear, of, the.

4) feared, Sigmund Freud, who, the, neurologist, founded, the, school, psychoanalyst, ferns (папоротники), of, psychiatry.

Exercise 12. Translate into English:

1. Однією з причин неврозів є внутрішні та зовнішні конфлікти людини.

2. Павлов характеризував невроз як хронічне захворювання з порушенням нервової діяльності.

3. Пацієнт скаржиться на дратівливість, слабкість та швидку втомлюваність з минулого тижня.

4. Невротична депресія проявляється пригніченим настроєм і песимістичними поглядами на майбутнє.

5. Відомо, що уникнення стресових ситуацій є одним із способів лікування неврозу.

6. Антидепресанти повинен підбирати лікар в залежності від його ефективності для даних симптомів неврозу.

7. Транквілізатори призначають в мінімальних дозах, щоб уникнути залежності.

8. Доведено, що когнітивно-поведінкова терапія є найефективнішим лікуванням неврозів.