#but the psychiatry of sexuality and gender in the early 20th century was deeply confused

[tanadrin]

dysphoria is a kind of neurosis so what are you even talking about?

dysphoria and neurosis are, as far as i can tell, entirely unrelated concepts. neurosis is repressed anxiety. in the casual/metaphorical/pejorative usage i was employing, it's often used to describe anything people are weirdly anxious or obsessive about, especially if they refuse to acknowledge that they're behaving weirdly.

dysphoria is simply the opposite of euphoria; it's an extremely generic concept, which is why as a symptom things described as "dysphoria" show up in the description of everything from dissociative disorders to depression to stress to feeling sad when you lactate. "gender dysphoria" (which i assume is what you meant specifically?) is just a fancy medical way of saying you feel bad about your gender, because in order to access certain kinds of medical interventions in our society we have to medicalize internal states in a way that makes them legible to preexisting bureaucracies. that could include repressed anxiety, but most people who have gender dysphoria are pretty intensely aware of their gender dysphoria. so neurosis is a pretty terrible model for describing what it's like if you want to understand it.