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14 - Neurosis: The Dark Side of Emotional Creativity
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- By James R. Averill, University of Massachusetts, Elma P. Nunley, ACT Counseling Center
- Edited by David H. Cropley, University of South Australia, Arthur J. Cropley, James C. Kaufman, Mark A. Runco, University of Georgia
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- Book:
- The Dark Side of Creativity
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 30 June 2010, pp 255-276
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Summary
The term “neurosis” was introduced in 1769 by Scottish physician William Cullen to refer to presumed nervous disorders in the absence of discernible neurologic defects. It gained wide currency during the first half of the twentieth century largely through the influence of Freud. Today, “neurosis” is no longer used as a technical term primarily because it is too broad for diagnostic and treatment purposes. Nevertheless, it is still used widely as a generic term for a wide range of disorders of primarily psychological origin. Carl Jung (1965) observed that frequently “people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life” (p. 140). This observation provides a good preliminary definition of neurosis. However, an important qualification is needed: Even more fundamental than contentment with inadequate or wrong answers are misdirected strivings for solutions. With this qualification in mind, we can ask: What kind of life questions lead to neurosis? And in what ways are neurotic answers inadequate or wrong? This chapter addresses these questions. Briefly stated, the kinds of life questions that occasion neuroses are those which (a) lead to emotional responses and (b) call for creative solutions. Neurosis results when an emotionally creative response miscarries.
REFLECTIONS ON THREE EARLY WORKS
Elsewhere (e.g., Averill, 1999; 2005; Averill & Nunley, 1992; Nunley & Averill, 1996) we have provided empirical support for emotional creativity, including laboratory research and clinical examples of emotional creativity gone awry. Here we take a different tack.
5 - Grief as an emotion and as a disease: A social-constructionist perspective
- Edited by Margaret S. Stroebe, Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands, Wolfgang Stroebe, Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands, Robert O. Hansson, Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands
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- Book:
- Handbook of Bereavement
- Published online:
- 04 May 2010
- Print publication:
- 26 March 1993, pp 77-90
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Summary
The third edition of The Handbook of Social Psychology (Lindzey & Aronson, 1985) contains no references to grief. Rodin (1985), in her contribution to the Handbook, does discuss briefly some of the consequences of bereavement. However, her discussion focuses on the deterioration in health that sometimes follows the loss of social support in general; grief as an emotion is not mentioned. This lack of reference to grief in volumes that presumably represent the state of the art might suggest that grief poses no issues of relevance to social psychology, either theoretically or practically. But such a suggestion has little plausibility. On the theoretical level, grief raises fundamental issues regarding the ties that bind people together and hence that make society possible in the first place. On the practical level, grief places a heavy burden on society, in the form of funeral and mourning rites, care for the bereaved, and so forth.
The neglect of grief by psychologists is by no means universal. During 1985, the same year that The Handbook of Social Psychology was published, 98 articles and books were listed under the heading of grief in Psychological Abstracts. This compares with 27 listings in 1975, 42 in 1980, and 107 in 1990. Most of this burgeoning literature has to do with the clinical aspects of grief. Grief is not only a state of intense personal anguish; it is also associated with increased risk for a wide variety of psychological and somatic disorders. Indeed, the suggestion has been made that grief itself is like a disease (Engel, 1961).