Abstract
A neurosis is a powerful and wondrous thing. In the face of plentiful guidelines from reality and from the rough edges of daily experience, the neurotic individual somehow persists in the same self-defeating pattern day after day and year after year. The sheer staying power of neurotic patterns is little short of miraculous, but we are prone to give the neurosis—and the neurotic—too much credit for this prodigious, if unfortunate, tenacity. My contention is that maintaining a neurosis is hard, dirty work, that cannot be successfully achieved alone. To keep a neurosis going, one needs help. Every neurosis requires accomplices.*
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© 1991 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Wachtel, P.L. (1991). The Role of “Accomplices” in Preventing and Facilitating Change. In: Curtis, R.C., Stricker, G. (eds) How People Change. The Springer Series in Social / Clinical Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0741-7_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0741-7_3
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