The Neurotic Personality of Our Time

The problem we are addressing here is the following: do today’s neurotics have such essential traits in common as to allow us to speak of a neurotic personality of our time? Since our interest lies in the ways in which neurosis affects personality, the field of our analysis will focus on two directions.

The first is that when we speak of neurosis we will refer to those conditions that result from an insidious chronic process that generally begins in childhood and comes to affect more or less broad sectors of the personality. Secondly, we are not so much interested in the symptomatic picture of neuroses as in character disorders, since personality deformations constitute the permanent background of neuroses. From the cultural point of view, too, the formation of character is more important than the symptoms, since it is the former and not the latter that determine human behavior.

With these restrictions in mind, we return to our question: do today’s neurotics have such essential traits in common as to allow us to speak of a neurotic personality of our time? Thus, when we speak of a “neurotic personality of our time,” we do not only mean that there are neurotics with common characteristics, but also that these basic similarities are essentially the product of the difficulties that reign in our time and in our culture. We cannot fail to note that the problems of a neurotic and those of an average individual of our century differ only in intensity.

The vast majority of us are forced to struggle with problems of competence, with fears of failure, with emotional isolation, with distrust of others and of ourselves.

The characteristics of the neurotic personality of our time have five major features: First: attitudes towards giving and receiving affection; second: attitudes towards self-esteem; third: attitudes towards the problem of self-affirmation; fourth: aggressiveness; and fifth: sexuality. As regards the first, one of the predominant traits of neurotics in our time is their excessive dependence on the approval or affection of others.

We all want to be loved and to feel appreciated, but in neurotics the dependence on affection or approval is disproportionate when compared with the real importance that others grant them in their existence. Furthermore, there is a notable contradiction between their desire to receive affection and their own capacity to feel it or to offer it. Their excessive demand for respect for their own needs can be combined with an equally complete lack of consideration for others.

Inner insecurity, expressed in this dependence on others, constitutes the second trait that calls attention when observing the neurotic. Feelings of inferiority and inadequacy are never lacking in them, which can manifest themselves in a series of ways — such as the idea of ​​incompetence, stupidity, ugliness, etc. — and which can persist even if they have no basis in reality.

The third group of attitudes, those concerning self-assertion, involves obvious inhibitions. Self-assertion means asserting one’s own claims without this implying an excessive desire to dominate. In fact, neurotics are inhibited from expressing their wishes or from asking for something, from expressing opinions or justified criticisms, or from giving orders. In the fourth group of difficulties, that relating to aggressiveness. Disorders of this kind manifest themselves in two different ways. One of them is the tendency to be aggressive, domineering and overly demanding, some sometimes realizing their aggressiveness and others not realizing this attitude.

The second of these disorders manifests itself in exactly the opposite way, with a superficial attitude of feeling easily deceived, dominated, scorned, tyrannized or humiliated. Moreover, these people do not realize that it is only their own attitude, rather they are bitterly convinced that everyone is trying to trick them. The peculiarities of the fifth group, those of the sexual sphere, can be classified in a general way as compulsive desires to have sexual activities, or as inhibitions against them. Such inhibitions are likely to manifest themselves in any of the stages leading to sexual satisfaction.

All of the above described, all of these attitudes, as incoherent as they may seem, are structurally related to each other. So, to summarize and conclude we will say that: when we speak of the neurotic personality of our time we do not only mean that there are neurotics by saying that there are neurotics with common essential peculiarities.