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http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/14948-022
Neurasthenia, hysteria and the compulsion neurosis differ from the neuroses in that they owe their origin, not to existing conditions, but to partially or completely forgotten situations, incidents or phantasies of childhood, whose persistence in symbolic form into adult life, or the reactions against them, or a compromise between the phantasies and the reactions or their symbols, appears in symptomatic form, which may even itself be symbolized. It need hardly be said that the unravelling of such a complicated tangle is the most difficult task which can present itself to the medical psychologist. There is certainly no such brainwracking work in any other department of medicine or surgery, or probably in any other profession. At the inception of a psychoneurosis there is frequently some exciting determinant which serves as a link with the forgotten past and is hence commonly but erroneously regarded as the primary cause of the disorder; attention should not be directed to this etiological factor so much as to the already existing mentation of the individual who has been affected by it. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)