This account of a study, which was begun 15 years ago and involved at least 25 investigators, is an important contribution; it does much to strengthen belief in specificity in psychosomatic disease. "Specificity" in this context means, broadly, that there are predictable relationships between physical diseases and psychological characteristics. The work was stimulated by specificity hypotheses developed at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, notably by French and Alexander. These hypotheses have beeen very influential, but previously had not been tested carefully.
Interviews with 83 patients form the basis of the report. Each had one of the following diseases: asthma, neurodermatitis, rheumatoid arthritis, essential hypertension, ulcerative colitis, duodenal ulcer or thyrotoxicosis. Each disease was represented by at least five patients of each sex. Interviews were tape-recorded, edited to remove conventional medical clues, and judged by a panel of from five to nine psychoanalysts. Using personality characteristics to make medical diagnoses,