title: Emotional strategies and their relationship to complaints of psychosomatic and neurotic symptoms.
abstract: Examined the emotional strategies that people use and their psychological consequences. On the basis of a questionnaire answered by 270 adults, two questions were selected that would categorize people into "emotional strategy" groups; i.e., emotives and suppressed-emotives. A second sample of 329 psychotherapy group participants were classified according to their emotional strategy and also were scored on a Complaint Questionnaire (CQ) designed to measure psychological maladjustment and psychosomatic complaints. Suppressed-emotives had a significantly higher score on the CQ than the emotive and non-emotive groups. Because the CQ is similar to other questionnaires that have been shown to differentiate diagnosed "neurotics" from normals, we conclude that suppressed-emotives should be distinguished from non-emotives in that the former show neurotic tendencies, while the latter do not.
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009497:Neurotic Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D011581:Psychological Tests; D011602:Psychophysiologic Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D011615:Psychotherapy, Group