How are 'psychosomatic' patients different from 'psychoneurotic' patients?
Two groups of white male patients of the same racial stock were selected on the basis of their acceptance or rejection by psychiatric residents for extended treatment. The group of patients eagerly accepted were mostly college students with anxiety, several of a phobic type, while the completely rejected group was composed of rheumatoid arthritic patients. Examination of samples of verbal transcript material showed that previously determined criteria, established on the basis of content analysis of interview transcripts, place the arthritic patients very much in the 'unsuitable for psychoteraphy' category, whereas the selected patients were highly 'suitable'. Verbal patterns in several different contexts are compared to show the differences 'concretely'; in addition, another such comparison shows the abundance of psychosomatic diseases in the families of the arthritic patients. Comparison of verbal material shows that patients with anxiety tend to be acutely sensitive to the future and to human relations, especially those with physicians in a personal sense. Arthritic patients, on the other hand, 'worry' much less, attend little to the future, incongruguously report that they are 'in command of' feelings. In a hospital psychiatric ward, anxious patients soon adapt with relief; the arthritic in such a ward insists that he follows his own idea of the behaviour of the hospitalized patient, complete with night clothes and bed rest. The conclusion suggested is that the two types of patients live in quite separate 'universes of discourse'.
D001007:Anxiety; D001168:Arthritis; D001290:Attitude; D001294:Attitude to Health; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D009497:Neurotic Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis; D010551:Personality; D011573:Psychoanalytic Interpretation; D011602:Psychophysiologic Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis; D012803:Sick Role