Psychoneurosis

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A mental disorder in which anxiety, obsessive thoughts or other emotional distress disrupt daily life without a clear physical cause
2. A psychological condition marked by persistent anxiety, compulsive patterns and emotional tension rooted in the mind rather than the body
3. An older term for a mental illness characterized by neurotic symptoms such as chronic worry, phobias and emotional instability

Etymology: "Psychoneurosis" is a modern compound, built from two Greek roots that were never joined in antiquity. The first part comes from "psukhe", meaning breath, soul or mind, which gave English "psycho-". The second comes from "neuron", meaning sinew, nerve or cord, which gave "neuro-". Both were combined with the Greek-derived suffix "-osis", used for abnormal or diseased conditions, and the result describes a mental disorder rooted in nervous disturbance. The word was coined in the modern era by scientists who needed precise terms for conditions the older vocabulary could not name. Ancient Greek writers had no concept of "neurosis" as a disease, so the combination reflects nineteenth-century medicine rather than classical thought, which is why its parts look ancient while the whole is recent. Its stem "neurosis" was itself a later invention, built on "neuron" to name a disorder of the nerves. "Psychoneurosis" then fused the mental and nervous strands into one label, so the word preserves two separate medical traditions in a single term.

Synonyms: neurosis