Bond disorders of a patient with asthma: a case study

The issue of treatment and providing preventive activities in bronchial asthma is still not fully investigated. Besides the medical aspect, psychiatrists and psychologists point to psychosomatic aspects, since psycho-social factors can evoke intensification of asthma symptoms, and also become the consequences of that disease. Previous psychosomatic investigations show that chronic illness makes the patients reveal extended dependence on others. Patients may also tend to perceive other people as being responsible for their health problems. Such an attitude is usually caused by the disease process and the feeling of threat related to disease symptoms. In the present article I discuss the case of a patient with diagnosed bronchial asthma who was in the course of psychodynamic therapy. The aim of therapy was to help the patient in an interpersonal sphere and, when a therapeutic alliance is already established, to support individualization and separation in his previously disordered process of development, and finally to support the process of recovery. The case presented below is one of many others, when patients with chronic diseases, including bronchial asthma, apply for therapy. The adult patients usually complain about discomfort in social situations, sometimes about difficulties with keeping work that they have just got, or, like in this case, about bond disorders which reveal as intrusiveness and adhesiveness.