conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a story titled The Neurotic Personality of Our Time about Psychoanalysis, Neurosis, Human with the genre: Health, Fitness & Dieting, Psychology & Counseling.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author (1885-1952) was one of the most influential psychoanalysts of the twentieth century. Her storys include Neurosis and Human Growth, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, New Ways in Psychoanalysis, Our Inner Conflicts, Self-Analysis, Feminine Psychology, Final Lectures, and, as editor, Are You Considering Psychoanalysis?
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first three paragraphs for this story.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Neurotic Personality of Our Time
  BECAUSE of its destructive character competitiveness in neurotic persons gives rise to a huge amount of anxiety, and consequently leads to a recoiling from competition. The question now is, Whence comes this anxiety?
  It is understandable without any difficulty that one source is a fear of retaliation for the ruthless pursuit of ambition. One who steps on all others, humiliates and crushes them as soon as they have or want to have success, must have the fear that they will want just as intensely to defeat him. But such a retaliation fear, although it will be active in everyone who achieves success at the expense of others, is scarcely the whole reason for the neurotic's increased anxiety and his consequent inhibition toward competition.
  Experience shows that retaliation fear alone does not necessarily lead to inhibitions. On the contrary, it may result merely in a cold-blooded reckoning with the imaginary or real envy, rivalry or malice of others, or in an attempt to expand one's power in order to be protected from any defeat. A certain type of successful person has only one goal, the acquisition of power and wealth. But if the structure of such personalities is compared with that of definitely neurotic persons there is one striking difference. The ruthless success-hunter does not care for the affection of others. He neither wants nor expects anything from others, neither help nor any kind of generosity. He knows that he can reach what he wants by his own strength and efforts alone. He will, of course, make use of people, but he cares for their good opinion only in so far as it is useful in attaining his own goal. Affection for its own sake means nothing to him. His desires and his defenses go along one straight line: power, prestige, possession. Even one who is driven to this kind of behavior by internal conflicts will not develop the usual neurotic characteristics if there is nothing within him to interfere with his strivings. Fear will only push him into enhanced efforts to be more successful and more invincible.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A mature and intelligent woman felt guilty about having had temper tantrums as a child, although she knew, intellectually, that they had been provoked by her parents' unreasonable conduct, and although in the meantime she had freed herself of the belief that one must think one's parents beyond reproach. Nevertheless her guilt feelings on this score persisted so strongly that she was inclined to take her failure to make erotic contacts with men as a punishment for her hostility toward her parents. By blaming an infantile offense for her present incapability of making such contacts she disguised the factors factually operating, such as her own hostility toward men and her having withdrawn into a shell as a consequence of a fear of rejection.
  The self-recriminations not only protect against the fear of disapproval but also invite positive reassurance, by provoking reassuring statements to the contrary. Even when no outside person is involved they provide reassurance by enhancing the neurotic's self-respect, for they imply that he has such a keen moral judgment that he reproaches himself for faults which others overlook and thus ultimately they make him feel that he is really a wonderful person. Moreover they give him relief, because they rarely concern the real issue of his discontentment with himself, and therefore factually leave a secret door open for a belief that he is not so bad after all.
  Before we proceed to discuss further functions of self-recriminating tendencies we have to consider other means of avoiding disapproval. A defense that is directly opposite to self-recrimination, and nevertheless fulfills the same purpose, is forestalling any criticism by always being right or perfect, thus leaving no vulnerable spots for criticism to find a foothold. Where this type of defense prevails any behavior, even though glaringly wrong, will be justified with an amount of in tellectual sophistry worthy of a clever and skillful lawyer. The attitude may go so far as to make it necessary to be right in the most insignificant and trifling details—to be always right about the weather, for example—because for such a person being wrong in any detail opens up the danger of being wrong altogether. Usually a person of this type is unable to endure the slightest difference of opinion, or even a difference of emotional emphasis, because in his thinking even a minute disagreement is equivalent to a criticism. Tendencies of this kind account to a great extent for what is called pseudo-adaptation. This is found in persons who in spite of a severe neurosis manage to maintain in their own eyes, and sometimes also in those of the people around them, an appearance of being "normal" and well adapted. In neurotics of this type one will scarcely ever go wrong in predicting an enormous fear of being found out or disapproved of.
  A third way in which the neurotic may protect himself against disapproval is to take refuge in ignorance, illness or helplessness. I encountered a transparent example of this in a French girl whom I treated in Germany. She was one of the girls I have already mentioned who were sent to me under the suspicion of feeblemindedness. During the first few weeks of analysis I was doubtful myself about her mental capacity; she did not seem to understand anything I said, even though she understood German perfectly. I tried to say the same things in simpler language, with no better results. Finally two factors clarified the situation. She had dreams in which my office appeared as a jail, or as the office of a doctor who had examined her physically. Both ideas betrayed her anxiety at being found out, the latter dream because she was terrified of any physical examination. The other revealing factor was an incident in her conscious life. She had forgotten to present her passport at a certain time, as required by law. When at last she went to the official she pretended not to understand German, hoping in this way to escape punishment—an incident she related to me laughingly. She then recognized that she had been using the same tactics toward me, and for the same motives. From this time on she proved to be a very intelligent girl. She had been taking shelter behind ignorance and stupidity to escape the danger of being accused and punished.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last two paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: These contradictions embedded in our culture are precisely the conflicts which the neurotic struggles to reconcile: his tendencies toward aggressiveness and his tendencies toward yielding; his excessive demands and his fear of never getting anything; his striving toward self-aggrandizement and his feeling of personal helplessness. The difference from the normal is merely quantitative. While the normal person is able to cope with the difficulties without damage to his personality, in the neurotic all the conflicts are intensified to a degree that makes any satisfactory solution impossible.
  It seems that the person who is likely to become neurotic is one who has experienced the culturally determined difficulties in an accentuated form, mostly through the medium of childhood experiences, and who has consequently been unable to solve them, or has solved them only at great cost to his personality. We might call him a stepchild of our culture.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: These contradictions embedded in our culture are precisely the conflicts which the neurotic struggles to reconcile: his tendencies toward aggressiveness and his tendencies toward yielding; his excessive demands and his fear of never getting anything; his striving toward self-aggrandizement and his feeling of personal helplessness. The difference from the normal is merely quantitative. While the normal person is able to cope with the difficulties without damage to his personality, in the neurotic all the conflicts are intensified to a degree that makes any satisfactory solution impossible.
  It seems that the person who is likely to become neurotic is one who has experienced the culturally determined difficulties in an accentuated form, mostly through the medium of childhood experiences, and who has consequently been unable to solve them, or has solved them only at great cost to his personality.