The concept of nemesis in psychoneurosis

Abstract

A patient who has a nemesis fear as the basic process in his psychoneurosis feels that he is destined to repeat the life course of one of his parents to eventual long-term psychosis, or incapacitating physical illness or death by illness or accident. He feels that this will occur at about the same age as that at which his parent suffered his misfortune. The patient during his childhood and adolescence had a traumatic relationship with this parent, and is haunted by guilt feelings about it, and fears that avenging destiny, or nemesis, requires that he pay with a similar misfortune for that which he feels he caused. These patients improve much in psychotherapy, but the underlying nemesis fear, though much reduced in severeity, is not entirely eliminated.