Obsessional neurosis: a nosographic innovation by Freud.

Freud refers in a paper published in 1895 to the phobias of obsessional neurosis. James Strachey, the editor of the Standard Edition of Freud's works, comments on this as follows: The term obsessional neurosis (Zwangsneurose) makes its first published appearance in this sentence...Lowenfeld... attributed the origin of both the term and the concept to Freud. Freud himself gave no indication at this point that he was introducing a new term. It was not until 1896 that he described obsessional neurosis as his nosographic innovation. The following questions are examined in the paper: Is it true that Freud coined the term obsessional neurosis? If so why is this fact so little known? What were the views of German-language neuropathology and psychiatry in the period around 1895 concerning the symptoms subsumed by Freud under obsessional neurosis, and in what respects did Freud's contribution differ from that of his colleagues? This paper is concerned exclusively with German-language psychiatry and neuropathology; it makes only isolated reference to their French counterparts. Furthermore, it focuses solely on the symptom that Freud placed at the core of obsessional neurosis, namely obsessional ideas.