ABSTRACT
Not very long ago practically all neurotic disturbances which on the one hand were not manifest cases of hysteria nor on the other of major psychoses, were as a rule grouped indiscriminately under the one designation of Neurasthenia, Though this easy if slipshod diagnostic practice is not yet entirely done away with, even among neurologists, nevertheless most neurologists and psychiatrists now clearly recognize that what was formerly called neurasthenia really comprises several distinct disease entities differing from one another in clinical characteristics and pathological structure, and that, as applied to most, if not all of them, the term neurasthenia is a decided misnomer. For most of these conditions are not, strictly speaking, nervous disorders at all. They are states of mind, psychological disturbances; and the nerves, as such, are not immediately involved in their pathology. The term, “nerve weakness,” whether in English or Greek, is therefore a poor name to apply to them.
