1. a mental disorder characterized by anxiety, depression, or other emotional symptoms without apparent organic cause; a neurosis.
Usage: dated or formal; psychology/psychiatry; largely superseded by modern diagnostic terms such as anxiety disorder or mood disorder

Examples

• Early 20th-century psychiatrists often diagnosed psychoneurosis in patients with unexplained physical symptoms.
• The term psychoneurosis was widely used before modern diagnostic manuals refined the classification of mental disorders.
• Her psychoneurosis manifested as chronic worry and insomnia.
• Freud and his contemporaries frequently treated cases of psychoneurosis in their clinical practice.
• The distinction between psychoneurosis and psychosis was central to psychiatric theory of that era.