[Ulcerative colitis].

Abstract

T H E HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT of psychosomatic investigation has dramatized both the possibilities and the limitations of the psychosomatic method. Although an exhaustive review of the literature lies beyond the scope of our presentation, a brief survey of the changing currents in psychosomatic theory will be helpful. Three more or less distinct concepts have guided workers in the field of psychosomatic medicine. The first and earliest attempted to treat the vegetative disorders as essentially hysterical conversion phenomena. Thus, Ferenczi,discussing diarrhea, wrote: "The hysterics show us clearly that any point in the large bowel can act as a sphincter, and is capable of finely localized contractions, making it possible to retain a fecal mass or a gas bubble at some point and to compress, so to say, shape it; this may be accompanied by painful paresthesia. The notions that specifically influence these innervations belong to a complex ruled by ideas of possession, retention, and unwillingness to give up. We find on analysis that the neurotic from whom something of worth has been taken against his will piles up a possession in his bowels for a considerable period as a substitute; that he announces with an unusually copious stool his intention of communicating long-withheld confessions to the analyst."