ABSTRACT
SINCE onr interest is focussed on the ways in which a neurosis affects the personality, the scope of our inquiry is limited in two directions. In the. first place, there are neuroses which may occur in individuals whose personality is otherwise intact and nndistorted, developing as a reaction to an external situation which is filled with conflicts. Mter discussing the nature of certain basic psychic processes we shall come back and consider briefly the structure of these simple situation neuroses.' We are not primarily interested in them here, because they reveal no neurotic personality but only a momentary lack of adaptation to a given difficult situation. When speaking of neuroses I shall refer to character neuroses, that is, conditions in which-though the symptomatic picture may be exactly like that of a situation neurosis-the main disturbance lies in the deformations of the character," They are the result of an
insidious chronic process, starting as a rule in childhood and involving greater or lesser parts of the personality in a greater or lesser intensity. Seen from the surface a character neurosis, too, may result from an actual situation conflict, but a carefully collected history of the person may show that difficult character traits were present long before any confusing situation arose, that the momentary predicament is itself to a large.extent due to previously existing personal difficulties, and furthermore that the person reacts neurotically to a life situation which for the average healthy individual does not imply any conflict at all. The situation merely reveals the presence of a neurosis which may have existed for some time.
