Functional Illnesses or “Pseudo-Neuroses”: On Mental Disorders Due to a Medical Condition

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<xref ref-type="book-part" rid="chapter4">Chapter 4</xref>. Functional Illnesses or “Pseudo-Neuroses”: On Mental Disorders Due to a Medical Condition

This chapter examines special mental disorders that meet Frankl’s definition of psychoses (i.e., they are pheno-psychological, somatogenic disorders), yet present like neuroses. These may be called functional illnesses or “pseudo-neuroses.”

There are three main types of functional illnesses:

Type I (Basedowian) functional illnesses involve neurotic symptoms, such as agoraphobia, caused by hyperthyroidism.

Type II (Addisonian) functional illnesses involve neurotic symptoms, such as depersonalization, caused by hypocorticalism.

Type III (Tetanoid) functional illnesses involve neurotic symptoms, such as claustrophobia or twitching, involving irritability of the central and peripheral nervous systems usually resulting from low levels of ionized calcium or more rarely magnesium.

While Viktor Frankl’s terminology in this chapter is unusual within English-language literature and some of his prescribing advice is outdated, his use of psycho-pharmaceuticals was innovative and his fundamental insights are timeless. Today, the disorders he describes as “functional illnesses” are listed in the Diagnostic Statistics Manual as “Mental Disorders Due to a Medical Condition.” Although psychotherapeutic techniques may be used in simultaneous therapy (described in chapter 3), patients with such disorders should be treated by a physician or therapist with current knowledge of psycho-pharmaceuticals.