For most of the 20th century, neurosis was the official diagnosis for the condition that we now call anxiety. In 1980 when the DSM-III arrived, the American Psychiatric Association replaced “neurosis” with a family of disorders: generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, phobic disorder, and OCD—all under the heading of anxiety. I know that many of us suffer from anxiety, but let's examine how some major theorists conceived of the reasons why we are neurotic. The moment we entered language (used words), a gap exists between the "I" who speaks and the being that the I claims to express. Left unprocessed, adult life becomes a series of eruptions or evacuations rather than a comprehensible experience.