The Occupational Neuroses (including Miners' Nystagmus)

These disorders seem to conform to the conception of "functional nervous disorder" in the narrow sense of the phrase. Specific difficulties in writers' cramp, however, often found to have symbolic significance to the patient. Cramp frequently one symptom in a larger syndrome. Both writers' and telegraphists' cramp are excrescences upon an underlying psychoneurosis, though associated symptoms are often overlooked.Miners' nystagmus supposed to be a physiological disorder that produces "neurasthenia"; ocular symptoms mostly psychoneurotic; the oscillation not a disability of itself.Night-blindness as a hysterical symptom. History of night-blindness in armies; its epidemic prevalence in Continental armies in the Great War and its comparative rarity in ours. Its absence in war pensioners and possible replacement by fear of the dark. Night-blindness in nystagmus probably a conversion of this fear.Accounts of nystagmus in crane-workers and train dispatchers. Cases of miners' nystagmus shown to be identical with psychoneuroses arising apart from nystagmus. The nervous symptoms increase as the nystagmus diminishes. Possibly the ocular disability behaves as a hysteria in guarding against further symptoms.Appearance of an occupational disorder among deep-sea divers, and the psychological investigation of individual cases described. Spurious unconsciousness was due to a condition of Angst which could be experimentally reproduced. The existence of a psychoneurotic basis and the possibility of foretelling the development of the specific disorder were demonstrated,Conclusion.-The occupational neuroses are to be regarded as minor psychoses (or psychoneuroses) and handled in accordance with modern principles of psychopathology.