Neurosis gave ordinary people a language for their suffering.

Evidence

Originally, with madness, we had the question of representation (delirium); today, with depression, we have the question of affect (suffering). Between the two lies the culture of nervousness at the end of the nineteenth century. How do we resist exhaustion, which comes from modern life, with its emotional inadequacy? How do we overcome guilt, which comes from within and from the inscription of the individual within a specific filiation, to free himself from tradition? Through a triple dynamic of increased attention to the biological, psychological, and sociological aspects of the mind, neuroses created a language, uses, and habits for growing client groups – a language that allowed the definition and expression of the worries that hard pathologies, those of the abnormal person, had not previously been able to speak. What we can say, we can become. These are the pathologies of the normal person. — Alain Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self, 262

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: ‘What we can say, we can become’ — the diagnostic language itself co-produces the pathologies of the normal person; a profound claim about language and subjectivity.
• ADDENDUM: Directly relates to ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ angle that moralized discourse both reflects and forges identity.
• XREF: Echoes the Frankfurt School’s interest in how language and culture industries shape pathology itself. — connects to: The modern self experiences suffering without naming a specific cause. — Alain Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing…, 174; The inner life depends on collective institutions that give it language — Alain Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing…, 530