Neurotic Symptoms, Personality and Personal Constructs

Abstract

The process whereby neurotic symptoms are generated, and the degree to which they are linked to pre-existent personality traits, is still a matter of debate in psychiatric and psychological literature. On the basis of the medical model, symptoms may be thought of as intruding unaccountably (from the subjective point of view) into the individual's experience as part of a disease process. This standpoint, where it exists, must be accepted as an article of faith, since no convincing demonstration of how a phobia or an obsession, for example, can be accounted for in this way has yet been put forward. However, cogent arguments have been advanced (e.g. Foulds 1965) for regarding symptoms as distinct from personality traits; in part such arguments have been occasioned by the confusion in psychiatric diagnosis between concepts such as ‘hysteria’ and ‘hysterical personality’.