Lecture
If situational neuroses are not so complex in their genesis, then character neuroses, being
formed over the course of many years and being the product of the layering of numerous psychotraumas (starting from childhood or adolescence), are, in their origin,
extremely complex and convoluted. A character neurosis forms under the influence of multiple
psychic traumas and represents a complexly subordinated system of conditioned reflexes that differ in their degree of awareness (conscious and unconscious). Since a character
neurosis is a conditioned-reflex formation, it was formed in some particular way,
and it had its own history of development. The leading role in the formation of a character neurosis in a child is played by his close environment, primarily his parents. If we wish to avoid the formation of a neurosis in a child (or to cure one who is already ill), we must understand
how a neurotic personality structure is formed, that is, know the schemes of formation of
neuroses – the schemes of formation of reflexes that disrupt adaptation.
As V.N. Myasishchev (1936, 1960) rightly notes, the earlier abnormal relationships were formed, the more entrenched the pathological modes of reacting become,
the more they take root in the habitually worn groove, the harder it becomes to restore
them to normal, and the more fixed the neurotic attitudes become. Each stage of life
already represents a new pathological superstructure atop the underlying pathological layer (1934, 1936, 1960). To denote a character neurosis, V.N. Myasishchev (1936, 1939, 1955,
1960) uses the terms «developmental neurosis», «pathological personality development» – psychoneurotic development, while for a situational neurosis he uses the terms «reactive neurosis», «reactive psychoneurosis», emphasizing that in the latter case the sources of the illness are linked to a difficult situation rather than to the inner structure of the personality (which, before
the psychotrauma, had no pathological traits): in the case of a reactive neurosis, a person with a
healthy premorbid (pre-illness) type of higher nervous activity (a full-fledged
foundation) falls ill owing to particularly grievous life circumstances, whereas developmental neurosis is a
chronic, pathological shaping of the personality under unfavorable conditions.
Let us examine the question of parental punishment of children in light of the formation of character defects. Some parents make a major mistake, each time promising to punish the child
for a misdeed, yet in the end practically never punishing him. Thus the parents’ words lose their
force (they are no longer given their former weight), and the child, guided solely by his current
needs, satisfies them unimpeded. And the parents, each time believing the promise the child has given, forgive him (after all, they love him so much) and do not punish him in any way (thereby
the parents form in the child the notion that the most important thing is to ask for forgiveness, while
actually changing one’s behavior is not really necessary). Everything repeats itself, and the child, additionally finding himself in the position of being overprotected, becomes ever more
insensitive to the words and needs of his parents. Soon all the needs that connect him with the people around him are displaced exclusively by his own: interest in schoolwork and socially
useful activities is lost. The parents, not understanding that it is precisely they who formed this insensitivity to others, and at the same time wishing to be proud of their child (what will they say to their
acquaintances upon meeting them, if their offspring suddenly stands out in some way from the typical picture of achievement
for that age group), bribe teachers at school and college, while at the same time carrying on
a struggle with the child, proving the importance of getting an education and expressing their bewilderment
as to why he is so ungrateful, unwilling to study. And in this situation the parents will not go so far as to have their child expelled from the ranks of students, since they
so regret the effort and resources already expended, and, on top of everything else – allowing expulsion is
an enormously powerful psychotrauma precisely for them (for they will no longer be able to take pride in their child).
In the parents’ psyche there is a dreadful intrapersonal conflict: they are enraged by the child’s behavior (in a number of cases it comes to beatings) on the one hand, and are forced to go on indulging him for the sake of their other needs on the other. Time passes, and now the child
already satisfies needs that run contrary to the administrative and criminal code.
If we touch on the formation of criminal behavior, the sources feeding it are
a great many. Thus, the behavior of parents who once reacted positively to
money the child brought home, having found it by chance in the street, may give rise to stealing: the child, needing positive emotional reinforcement from
his parents, will seek that reinforcement again and again, and once he has been shown what brings them joy, he will try not merely to find money in the street, but to steal it.
A powerful precondition for the distortion of a child’s character is situations in which the birth of the child was unwanted (because the parents did not want to terminate an unwanted
pregnancy; because of an abrupt break in the relationship with the partner during the pregnancy, and the
resulting change in the value of the child for the mother), or in which the birth of the child
was dictated not by the direct value of the child himself, but by mediated value, that is, the child was born not as the fruit of love, but serves as a convenient means of achieving certain needs (so that the child will support the parents in old age; so that everything is «like everyone else’s» – so as not to be judged for having no children; the birth of
a second and subsequent child so as not to be afraid in case one is lost).
When a child is unwanted, he is not a value in himself, he is a hindrance, he is not loved,
and lack of love is an extremely powerful factor of neurotization. When a child is called upon to perform some
function, love for him, while present, is of course not of the quality that would prevent the formation of a neurotic personality structure. If the first variant
(when the child is unwanted) is dangerous in the overwhelming majority of cases, the second variant (when
the child is born not on the basis of his value as such, but because of a certain function he is to perform)
is more favorable – there is a certain possibility of avoiding neurotic development. Lack of love for a child is often compensated for by showering the child with all manner of gifts – buying him off, which can in no way even remotely
compensate for the absence of true warmth and involvement.
It is beyond dispute that an extremely fertile ground for the neurotization of a child is an unfavorable atmosphere in the family – constant conflicts, the settling of scores (neurotization
is in a number of cases noted already in the first year of life). A child in such a situation, as a rule,
takes the side of one of the parents and on this basis builds «his own» understanding of the world, but
this understanding is in fact not really his own, since it is based on adopting the position of the parent who is more
significant at that particular moment, rather than on a position of common sense. Involving a child
in the settling of relationship disputes, and moreover encouraging him to adopt one position or another, is a great
mistake. Constant conflicts in the family repeatedly force the spouses to consider
whether to preserve the marriage or to divorce, but in making this decision they are compelled to be guided not by the value of the marriage in itself, but by its value also for raising
the child. Thus arises one of the most common questions: «What is better for
the child – divorce or preserving the marriage?». But the choice is by no means made between two
alternatives, as many mistakenly believe! Both divorce and the preservation of the marriage can cause
neurotization, and improvement of the child’s mental health. That is, divorce and preservation of the
marriage can be right or wrong – four variants in all.
Divorce is bad if the child, left with one of the parents, sees the suffering
this causes that parent, empathizes emotionally, tries in some way to compensate for the parent’s suffering, in a number of cases taking on the role of the parent who has left the family – a role
that cannot be borne under any circumstances. What we have here is a situation in which the child’s
need for the existence of normal relationships within the family is blocked (the parents have divorced), and
once a need is blocked, the child tries to change his behavior so as to increase the probability of satisfying that need, but no matter what he does, he cannot change the probability of satisfying that particular need (only the parents can do that). Since the need remains blocked, this leads to an accumulation of negative emotions, which finds its expression in outwardly incomprehensible emotional reactions (in
fact the reason for them is clear – a prolonged experience of negative emotions and the impossibility of discharging them), in emotional breakdowns, in disorders of the internal organs. And all of this the child is rewarded with by
parents who cannot sort out their own relationship, let alone understand
what is happening in the child’s psyche during conflict situations in the family.
Divorce is also bad in cases where the child’s parents, having separated, begin to speak
negatively about each other, with a tinge of hostility, which is entirely unacceptable, since the conditioned reflexes being formed in the child in the present will operate in the future, determining
distortions in his relationships in his subsequent adult life. In a burst of strong emotion parents fail to give account of what they are saying: for example, a mother tells her son (daughter) that
his (her) father is an idiot, from which the child must quite naturally conclude that he is the son
(daughter) of an idiot. Neither spouse should forget that they chose each other and
that only they bear responsibility for that choice: it is very easy to reward the other party with a pithy epithet, instead of admitting the error in choosing a partner, admitting an inability to discern his true qualities, an inability to regulate the relationship, a lack of knowledge of oneself and of one’s partner. Moreover, one of the parents begins to see in the child the habits
of the other parent (which is hardly surprising) and points them out with irritation: «You even sit
just like him!». These are truly damaging statements, which naturally lead to distortions in the child’s view of the world.
Preserving the marriage has a negative effect on the child’s psyche if he continues to
find himself in an unfavorable family setting: constantly witnessing rows and the settling of
scores. The height of parental madness is behavior in which the child becomes
a bargaining chip in the settling of relationship disputes (the child is manipulated in order to influence
the outcome of the conflict – «look what you’re doing – the child is beside himself because of the rows, he
looks a wreck») or when one of the parents stresses that «I’m living with him (her) only for your sake, for your future». The translation of this phrase is as follows: 1) «you are to blame for my suffering»; 2) «you owe me». And once the child feels guilty and indebted, this warps his psyche, his needs become distorted: in place of the existing adequate needs come alien, forcibly instilled inadequate ones. Just as massive a
destructive effect on the child’s psyche is produced by situations in which the child is used to make one of the parents stay in the family in the event of an announced decision to break off the relationship. The child has his own view of the situation, and forcing
him to act as an intermediary in settling the relationship breaks his psyche: the child
cannot refuse the parent asking for his help, just as he does not want to respond to the
request, thereby humiliating himself before the other parent who has expressed a wish to leave the family –
we clearly see mutually contradictory needs – a universal method of neurotization. All
that has been described above occurs against a backdrop of strong negative emotions, which contribute to the instantaneous formation of new (inadequate) needs: as we already know
from previous sections, the formation of conditioned reflexes is extraordinarily facilitated during
strong negative emotions.
Practice shows that spouses are not prepared for a situation of relationship breakdown, which, unquestionably, points to problems in forecasting their own actions, a mindset focused only
on the immediate future. So what is needed in order for divorce not to become such a psychotraumatic event? For this it is necessary to know a whole series of psychological regularities. Let us dwell on one of them. This regularity will concern primarily women, who, while married, often lose their professional qualifications – either ceasing to work altogether, or taking a low-paid job. In a situation where everything in the family is
fine, the loss of qualification is not so frightening, but if, after some period of time, a rift arises in the relationship and the question of breaking up arises, the woman
finds herself in an extremely difficult position. The gravity of the situation is determined by the fact that it is precisely with the
woman, as a rule, that the child remains, and she will now have to deal with matters of material support, which, given her lost qualifications, is practically
impossible to achieve (hence the conclusion – one must not only avoid losing one’s professional qualifications, but also must not count on the conditions of life always remaining unchanged).
In the event that a woman understands that there is no value in the marriage as a union of two people in love (after sorting out the relationship she understands that the spouse, in the form in which he has presented himself at
this given moment, has no value), she desires, with great eagerness, the swiftest possible divorce. But
this is only one side of the matter; the other will concern the value of the marriage as an institution for the child’s socialization. And if the woman concludes that the marriage, in relation to the child, is just as important as it is unimportant in relation to her spouse, a terrible contradiction arises (let us recall, contradictory tendencies are an extremely powerful psychotrauma that tears apart
the psyche): the wish to destroy the marriage collides with the wish to preserve it. If the woman chooses in favor of preserving the marriage for the child’s sake (in most cases – a serious
mistake), this will inevitably neurotize her – she will have to live with her spouse, constantly suppressing negative emotions connected with her hostile attitude toward him (one of the most unenviable and terrible situations – living with someone whom one either hates, or despises,
or feels revulsion toward). Suppressed negative emotions will inevitably make
themselves known, either in the form of psychosomatic illnesses, as described earlier, or in the phenomenon of
delayed aggression, which is described in the chapter devoted to psychotherapeutic rules – the chapter that is the logical conclusion of the theme of neuroses and psychotherapy. What
happens to the psyche of a child growing up in a neurotized family, we already know.
So, a woman is often forced to make a decision not only based on her personal interests, but also based on the interests of the child. The decision made must be such that it
is not to the detriment of something, that the decision be well thought out, sober-minded – so that, as in the example given above, the woman does not tell her child that she lived with his father
only for the child’s sake, and that he ruined her whole life, that he must repay her in some way for this
sacrifice. There should be no sacrifice: if a woman has resolved to raise a child alone, she
must clearly understand that this is her decision and that she alone must bear responsibility for it – the child is in no way to blame for the fact that at some point (including during infancy) he
became a hindrance, became an irritant. In such situations women need, above all, to
reflect on their own thoughts, to understand how they perceive all the participants in the difficult situation.
In situations of this kind, so many strong affects occur that they give rise to a whirlwind of
contradictory thoughts, which, as we already know, will be subject to amnesia, which will
have to be overcome later on. So, decision-making must proceed from
two fundamental needs – preserving one’s own mental and, consequently, physical health, as well as preserving the same in the child. Here we once again
return to the question we have been discussing of the variants of how the situation develops in the case of divorce and
preservation of the marriage – two favorable and two negative. Two of them we have already described (when
the preservation of the marriage and divorce have a negative effect on the child’s psyche), it remains to examine the other two.
So, if a woman has decided to preserve the marriage, she needs to know how to achieve a good outcome, just as if she has decided on divorce proceedings, how to achieve a good outcome in
that case as well. Preserving the marriage can have a positive effect on the child’s psyche,
but the spouses must in doing so show courage and not display, even remotely, what the relationship between them actually is. Let us say at once – this falls into the category of the very difficult to achieve, since one cannot fool a child, he clearly perceives the smallest differences in
the structure of his parents’ relationship. The child will pay attention to this and will do everything (in
this case he can be forgiven for it) so that the relationship between his parents becomes as it was before. He will push his parents toward those forms of interaction that he observed earlier
and that are pleasant to him. The parents, meanwhile, feeling negativity toward each other, will be forced to
go along with what the child wants, since it is hard to look one’s own child in the eye and see
his suffering. If the parents’ need to please the child is satisfied, then the need to be further apart from each other is blocked. And the negative emotion connected
with this is blocked and suppressed (the parents, against their true feelings, put on an imitation of a happy family life),
and suppression, as we already know, leads to destructive consequences for the organism. This is
what those who have resolved to preserve their marriage for the child’s sake must be prepared for! Another, more
favorable, scenario unfolds when the spouses preserve the marriage for the child’s sake, but
in doing so all the previously suppressed negative emotions have been discharged, all
conflict situations have been worked through, all neurotic symptoms eliminated. That is, the spouses feel no hatred toward each other, and, entirely without any effort on themselves, they lead a double life:
at home – they are a caring family couple, while outside the home – people who feel love for others and live by other interests.
Let us now turn to describing the fourth variant, in which divorce is a benefit for the child’s psyche (let us recall that the four variants indicated are singled out on the basis of their effect on
the child’s psyche, but one must not forget about the preservation of the spouses’ mental health either, which we also mentioned). Divorce will become a benefit for the child if he stops seeing the
conflict situations that accompanied his parents’ life. The child’s psyche is directed toward forming an ever greater number of conditioned reflexes, which
are meant to ensure better adaptation to the surrounding world, and if the child does not
see the destructive behavior of his parents, who hate each other, then his
psyche will quite naturally not become distorted, it will not contain pathological
conditioned connections as a reflection of the family relationships, since the character of communication between
the parents is, as it were, a template for the future. In order not to traumatize the child and not to distort his worldview, after separating, the parents are obliged to speak of each other respectfully, under no circumstances allowing themselves to display any negative reaction toward
each other. But this is only one side of the problem. If the relationship between the spouses in the family had always been good, but it so happened that divorce could not be avoided after all, then it will be necessary to preserve this benevolent attitude toward each other and to prepare the child for the fact that his parents will no longer live together, but still feel very well
toward each other.
1. What character traits predispose a person to neurotic disorders?
2. Are there differences in the methods of treating various forms of neurosis?
3. Can psychosomatic illnesses arise in a person who has a somatic disease?
4. What actions must be taken upon discovering a psychosomatic disorder (headache, hypertension, etc.)?
5. On what grounds can neuroses be called conditioned-reflex formations?
6. Familiarize yourself with the works of S. Freud and determine what they have in common with the works of V.N. Myasishchev and A.M. Svyadoshch.
7. Under what conditions will an illness with elements of secondary gain arise in a person with hysteroid traits and in an ordinary person?
8. Can the personality traits of a psychasthenic and a hysteroid be combined in one person?
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