Neuroticism and its «miracles» A cross-cultural or an anachronist matter?

Abstract

Rare behaviors, extravagant beliefs and some sort of social isolation frequently put the clinicians on the trail of a psychotic disorder. If we add sudden onset and end, plus the existence of certain stressors that are thought to be precipitant, the initial hypothesis could be referred to with specific surnames: «brief» or «acute and transient». The present case shows the need to weigh the adjectives applied to behavior and ideation (i.e. «extravagant» or «weird») according to biographical and cultural references of «normality». By means of this contextualization, what initially might have seemed to be a psychosis has a neurotic explanation or, using a rather anachronistic term, «hysterical» explanation in which the spectrum of beliefs plays a crucial pathoplastic roll.