[Definition and classification of neuroses]

The content of the concept of neurosis has been subject to repeated change in the course of scientific development, the collective term being still used to describe etiopathogenetically different disease pictures. Leading G.D.R. psychotherapists, in the interest of mutual understanding, have decided to narrow down the term "neurosis" and use it only to describe biographically derivable and psychoreactively produced and sustained disorders of the person-environment relation, thus acting in conformity with the present state of knowledge and following a recent international trend. Neuroses may, in principle, be classified according to different aspects. For the classification of individual forms of neurosis the author and his associates decided to select, as primary criteria, the main etiological factors believed to be chiefly responsible for the actual disease picture, and this was done under etiopathogenetic and at the same time diagnostic and therapeutic aspects. Accordingly, a distinction is drawn between the following four forms, of which two are in group 1 and two in group 2. 1. Neurotic reactions in the two subforms; affective reactions producing enduring effects; functionally fixed reactions; and 2. Neurotic developments in the form of primary and secondary maldevelopments. The above four forms of neurosis were exactly defined operationally, and they are, in general, easily distinguishable diagnostically, differ to a large extent in both course and prognosis, and require different therapeutic approaches.