SNO and SNE: two systems at the root of neurosis

One calculates your position. The other calculates your advantage. Eduardo Casarotto’s distinction between pride and selfishness changes the question we ask about familiar reactions — and the capacity we try to develop next.

English editorial edition of Isabella Becker’s Portuguese essay, translated and adapted for international readers. The article presents Virtology’s interpretation; its specific theoretical mechanisms should be distinguished from independently established clinical findings.

A group of people is talking about a trip. Nobody is boasting, comparing, or saying “I went and you did not.” It is an ordinary conversation about something someone experienced. One person leaves feeling humiliated. Furious. Calling the others arrogant.

Eduardo Casarotto recounts observing this scene and asks a question that opens up the whole essay: if nobody was placing themselves above anyone else, where did the humiliation come from?

His answer is a comparison that ran inside one person without an aggressor in the room. That comparison, he proposes, connects experiences that otherwise seem unrelated: a criticism outweighing ten compliments; the same house seeming smaller after a change of reference group; the quietest person in a room responding to the same concern about status as its most conspicuous show-off.

This article presents the two systems Virtology places at the root of neuroses: the Neurofunctional System of Pride (SNO) and the Neurofunctional System of Selfishness (SNE). The Portuguese acronyms are retained across the English editions. These are Casarotto’s theoretical constructs, which draw on neuroscience; they are not newly established anatomical structures or recognized diagnostic categories.

His central proposition is explicit: pride and selfishness are the two roots of all neuroses. The following pages explain what he means and why distinguishing them matters inside his method. That proposition is not an established explanation of every mental health condition.

1 · A shared origin, two different instructions

Casarotto locates the proposed origins of both systems in primitive survival processes, especially those associated in his account with the brainstem. They begin, metaphorically, as twins. That shared origin is one reason people confuse them.

But his model distinguishes two survival instructions.

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The distinction can be carried in one line: selfishness concerns whose needs come first; pride concerns what a position says about your importance.

SNO calculates position. SNE calculates advantage. Both keep the self at the center, which makes them look similar from a distance.

The brainstem origin story is part of Casarotto’s explanatory proposal. Social evaluation and decisions involving other people draw on distributed brain processes; current research does not establish a pair of discrete pride and selfishness centers in the brainstem.

Inside Virtology, pride is therefore not simply one moral fault among many. It is treated as a central organizing process beneath neurotic patterns, and as a starting point for work on resistance and the development of virtues. The ambition is to work on a shared source of several patterns. Whether that ambition produces the proposed clinical results requires evidence beyond the coherence of the explanation.

2 · Pride, one phrase at a time

The book’s technical account of pride can be summarized as a continuing calculation of relative position, referred back to the self and experienced through reward. There are four parts to that sentence.

Part one: a continuing calculation

Continuing means that you need not deliberately decide to compare yourself. In the model, the process operates in the background as you enter a room, join a meeting, or open a social feed. By the time you notice it, the result may already have arrived as a feeling, rather than an argument you can follow step by step.

This helps explain why “I know it should not matter” often arrives after the reaction. You are reasoning with a conclusion your experience has already made emotionally significant.

Part two: relative position

The calculation is not simply how much you have. It is where you stand in relation to others. It measures a place in a line, rather than an amount in isolation.

Scoring seven in a class that averaged five can feel very different from scoring seven in a class that averaged nine. The seven has not changed. The reference group has. A pay increase can stop feeling satisfying when you hear what a colleague received. A house can suddenly feel inadequate beside a different set of houses.

Research does support the relevance of comparison to reward processing. In an fMRI experiment, Fliessbach and colleagues found that another participant’s payment affected reward-related responses in the ventral striatum. Zink and colleagues also studied neural responses to social hierarchy. These findings provide context for the book’s argument, rather than independently validating SNO. See the studies on social comparison and reward and social hierarchy.

Part three: referred back to the self

Here the argument moves from comparison to personal meaning. The result is not stored merely as “the order of the group has changed.” It becomes “I matter more” or “I am less.”

Casarotto connects this to self-referential processing involving medial prefrontal regions and the default mode network. In his interpretation, an event about rank becomes material for the story a person tells about themselves.

This is how “I lost the argument” can become “I am worth less.” A comparison that might have remained information becomes a judgment of identity. The network account is a theoretical connection: no single area can be read as a direct meter of someone's pride or worth.

Part four: experienced through reward

The model does not treat status as only an opinion someone could casually exchange for a better one. A gain may feel rewarding; a loss may feel threatening and bodily uncomfortable. That gives the pattern more force than a preference.

Simply telling someone to let go of pride may therefore leave its function untouched. If recognition has become linked to safety and belonging, an instruction to stop caring about recognition does not teach a different way of experiencing those needs.

3 · Why a loss of status can hurt

Humiliation and exclusion can be deeply distressing and physically felt. Research has investigated overlap between activity associated with social rejection and physical pain. But overlapping activity does not mean that the two experiences are neurologically identical: more detailed analyses have found distinguishable patterns. Woo and colleagues’ study is an important qualification to a simple “same circuit, same pain” explanation.

The everyday question in the essay can still be useful: does the intensity of a familiar reaction tell you something about what was resting on that point?

Two people hear the same remark. One forgets it within minutes; the other revisits it for days. The words alone may not explain the difference. In Casarotto’s reading, part of what differs can be the importance attached to the position apparently threatened by them.

That returns us to the story of the trip. If there really was no put-down, the feeling of being diminished may have been generated by an internal comparison. It is worth asking about that possibility without assuming it in every case.

This reading must not be used to excuse violence, abuse, discrimination or genuine injustice. There can be an aggressor, and humiliation can be deliberately inflicted. Telling a harmed person that only their pride was injured would erase the event rather than explain it.

4 · The six families of pride

Foundations of Virtology describes twenty behaviors associated with pride. The essay groups them into six families, each understood as an expression of a shared process.

The book also proposes a category it calls a pride personality disorder, with a threshold involving five or more features that impair quality of life, relationships or work. That is the author’s proposed classification. It should not be mistaken for a standard diagnosis, or turned into an online checklist for diagnosing yourself or another person.

What connects apparent vanity with difficulty asking for help? In the model, both may protect importance. What connects controlling a room with condemning someone on moral grounds? Both may make position feel secure.

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An important distinction in Casarotto’s vocabulary: arrogance is not outside pride. It is one conspicuous expression of it. His account is of one system expressed in different ways, not a division into proud people and people who possess some entirely separate mechanism called arrogance.

Ordinary English also uses pride for satisfaction in an achievement or affection for someone’s growth. The narrower technical meaning used here should not be imposed on every everyday use of the word.

5 · The regulator: displayed and concealed

Across the six families, the book adds a regulatory element. It connects this to executive processes involving the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex: planning, anticipating consequences and holding back responses.

In the model, this regulator does not create a seventh family of pride. It edits what is expressed. A person may swallow the urge to announce an achievement; seek recognition through a generous-looking gesture; or present themselves as modest because modesty receives admiration in their social world.

The visible behavior changes while the wish for position may remain. That is the distinction the essay is trying to make, rather than a claim that generosity or modesty must conceal an ulterior motive.

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A brake is not an engine. Applying the brake tells you something about regulation, but not everything about the force being regulated. In the same way, containing anger and developing gentleness need not be the same experience.

Restraint can be valuable. The point is not to dismiss self-control, but to distinguish it from a deeper change in what feels necessary. A person can become more skillful at preventing an outburst while continuing to experience the same internal struggle.

6 · A victim identity, self-deprecation and apparent modesty

Three presentations can look like the opposite of pride. Casarotto asks whether they sometimes maintain the same concern with position. They require care, because an outward appearance never establishes a hidden motive.

An identity organized around being wronged

The book distinguishes actual victimization from a pattern in which being wronged becomes central to identity, recognition or the expectations placed on others. Its provocative question is: Who would you be if this part of your life became easier?

Used carefully, that is a question for reflection, not a denial that harm occurred. It must never become a way to discredit someone reporting abuse or seeking protection. The proposed mechanism concerns how an identity can remain organized around a wound; it does not make the wound imaginary.

Self-deprecation

In Casarotto’s account, arrogance and self-deprecation can alternate within the same comparison. The sign has changed, but the measuring has continued: now the person places themselves below the group.

Speaking negatively about yourself may sometimes invite reassurance or contradiction. It can also arise from depression, repeated criticism, shame or other experiences. The words alone do not reveal which explanation applies. The reflective question is whether a comparison has again become a verdict about your worth.

When apparent modesty is exhaustion

The essay also distinguishes this from a person who appears to accept everything because they have little energy left to respond. Passivity associated with exhaustion or depression is not evidence of a cleverly disguised wish for status.

That distinction matters because the needs are different. A person who is depleted may require care and support, rather than an interpretation that makes their difficulty another failure of humility.

The original essay suggests noticing what happens when something good arrives: is it experienced as threatening to an identity, barely felt through exhaustion, or received without recalculating position? These are possible patterns to explore. They are not a three-way diagnostic test. A qualified assessment cannot be replaced by observing someone's response to praise or good news.

7 · Selfishness: weighing self and other

If pride calculates position, selfishness calculates advantage. The central operation in Casarotto’s account is weighing the self against the other. Whenever something is to be shared — time, money, attention, effort, the last slice — interests receive different weights. Selfishness describes a repeated resolution in favor of one's own interests, with insufficient weight given to others.

The book connects this to valuation, representation of other people, and perspective-taking. Its proposed account includes ventromedial prefrontal valuation, dorsomedial processes representing another person as an agent, and the temporoparietal junction as a contributor to considering others.

Research has linked differences in altruistic decisions to features and recruitment of the temporoparietal junction. For example, Morishima and colleagues examined individual differences in altruism and brain structure and activity. Such work provides relevant context; it does not show that there is a single selfishness circuit or a universal rule that every generous decision starts from selfishness.

Casarotto interprets habitual self-priority as a primitive starting point that can be transformed through the development of virtues. Within that account, considering another person may initially take deliberate effort and later become more spontaneous. The developmental ambition is to change what enters the decision without having to argue for it afresh every time.

This is why his definition aims to move away from moral condemnation. A missing capacity is something to understand and develop, rather than evidence that someone has acquired a special substance called badness.

The model groups expressions of selfishness into five modes.

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The essay places several related patterns around these modes: lying or manipulation, putting possessions ahead of relationships, ambition pursued at others’ expense, denying the impact of one's conduct, and a lack of remorse for harms that receive little attention.

These are not exclusive indicators of SNE. The contribution the model seeks to make is a question about weighting: whose interests were represented, whose were left out, and what made that omission possible?

8 · The distinction that separates them

Here is the contrast at the center of the article. Both systems are interpreted through survival, but they answer different questions. In pride, the other person becomes a measure or a rival. In selfishness, their needs are given too little weight.

One is preoccupied with how it stands before others. The other may proceed as though others barely enter the decision.

The same visible behavior can serve either function. That is why the question is about the calculation, not merely the act.

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These are possibilities, not instructions to read minds. A situation may involve both concerns, as well as pressures the observer does not know about.

The useful question is often: Which concern seems most active here, and what else might explain the response? The distinction serves reflection and the choice of what to develop. It does not sort people into two boxes.

9 · Four principles: a proposed developmental sequence

The original essay brings in teaching from outside Foundations of Virtology. According to that account, a study group’s discussion of Freud’s pleasure and reality principles led to two further formulations used in Casarotto’s teaching.

They form a proposed sequence for thinking about what directs an action.

1. The pleasure principle. “I want it now.” The immediate want dominates; another person and the longer-term future may be outside the frame.
2. The reality principle. “I cannot have it now. I need to work or wait.” Satisfaction is deferred, but remains the goal. Practical constraints have entered the picture.
3. The principle of mine. Competence, planning and delayed gratification are organized around personal advantage. In this teaching, it expresses how self-priority can remain active inside an outwardly mature life.
4. The principle of the other. Another person's good can become a reason to act without first passing through one's own pleasure or advantage. This is the connection to Selflessness, or Abnegação.

The two additions belong to Casarotto’s teaching, not to Freud’s original pair. The sequence is an educational model, not a scientifically established set of stages everyone necessarily passes through in order.

Its useful provocation is that efficiency and generosity are different questions. A person can be productive, organized and capable of postponing gratification while still organizing nearly everything around themselves. The capacity to execute a plan does not, by itself, tell us whose needs the plan includes.

10 · Humility and Selflessness: two changes in the calculation

Each system has a corresponding virtue in the method. Their definitions describe a proposed change in functioning, rather than a demand to become morally impressive.

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Neither proposal is suppression. Humility is not deciding you are small; that would preserve the same scale and move you downward on it. Selflessness is not erasing your own needs, abandoning boundaries or tolerating exploitation. The aim is a different balance, not the disappearance of the self.

In a class recalled in the source essay, Casarotto defines humility through learning that you need not be important in order to be loved or protected. That phrasing exposes the chain he is trying to change: importance → belonging → survival. As long as those links feel inseparable, letting go of status may feel much more serious than exchanging one opinion for another.

His teaching emphasizes experience and repetition, not just agreement with a sentence. It describes working with a short phrase specific to the person's situation and gradually testing the feared prediction in daily life. The intended learning is that disapproval or a moment of being alone need not destroy the person.

This is a description of the method, not an instruction to expose yourself to unsafe people or situations. Rejection, isolation and threats vary greatly in their real consequences. Any clinical use needs appropriate assessment, consent and support. There is no promise here of a fixed number of days or a guaranteed change in brain activity.

You can explore the wider practice in the Manual of Human Development through Virtues, whose English translation is in progress and whose materials can be requested privately.

11 · Why Humility comes first in this method

This is one of the strongest propositions in the account. Casarotto places pride at the beginning of the neurotic patterns he describes and treats Humility as the usual entry point for work on them. His proposed reasoning is that a threat to importance can make acknowledgment, experimentation and correction difficult.

Even when self-priority appears prominent, his sequence is Humility first, then Selflessness on more receptive ground. It is a functional argument: reducing the need to defend position is intended to make it easier to recognize another person's needs and try a different response.

The source lecture phrases the connection in terms of resistance. Fear of being wrong, disapproved of or rejected can keep a person from entering a situation, accepting a failed attempt or changing a familiar response. Within the model, work on Humility addresses that defensive stake.

Resistance also has other explanations. A person may be frightened, exhausted, responding to coercion, or disagreeing for good reasons. Neither reluctance nor a mental health condition establishes that a person lacks humility. The theory’s broad claim needs to remain distinct from what an assessment of an individual can support.

The essay includes a report from the author’s work in prison settings. Participants are described as returning to Humility when they felt stuck with Forgiveness or Acceptance. This is meaningful as an account of how they understood their practice. It is not a controlled outcome study or proof that the sequence is required for everyone. The author and institutional work are presented in the publishing overview.

The question beneath the sequence is worth retaining: has the visible behavior changed, or has the person's relationship to the situation changed as well? Virtology is interested in the second question. A smoother performance may coexist with the same internal strain; the method aims for a change in the capacity from which the person responds.

12 · What this is not

Three boundaries keep strong words from becoming convenient labels.

Pride, in this technical sense, is not the same as stable self-esteem. The distinction is between a sense of worth that can survive fluctuations in position and a process that keeps asking position to supply that worth. Feeling satisfied with an achievement does not by itself establish the pattern described here.

Selfishness is not synonymous with psychopathy. A pattern of insufficient consideration should not be casually equated with a clinical construct or used to infer one. The article does not offer a scale on which ordinary self-interest simply becomes psychopathy at the far end.

None of this is a diagnosis. It is a framework for investigating situations and the author's proposed approach to development. Its least useful application would be attaching SNO and SNE labels to everyone around you while leaving your own interpretations unexamined.

If you retain one question, let it be this:

You do not have to turn that question into a verdict. You can use it to make an automatic response more visible, notice whose interests or judgments mattered, and consider whether another response is available.

The same question reaches beyond individual life. In God Bless America, Casarotto asks how cultural structures teach people what to value, pursue and recognize. His concept of structural Americanism brings the concern with status and advantage into a wider account of social life. The English translation of that book is available for editorial consideration.

The full theoretical background is presented in Foundations of Virtology. Its English translation is in progress; evaluation materials may be requested from Isabella Becker through the international contact.

Source of the author's propositions: Eduardo Casarotto, Foundations of Virtology, especially the discussion of the primitive pair. The Portuguese essay also draws on the Virtology Course’s Human Needs Group I teaching from February 2026 and the professional formation’s live meeting from July 2026. The studies linked in this English edition provide context and qualifications; they do not independently establish the SNO/SNE model or its proposed clinical effectiveness.