[The psychological universe of the asthmatic]

The very nature of asthmatic attacks is alarming. Waiting for an attack in itself creates anxiety. The unpredictable nature of the condition is also anxiety producing. However, this type of anxiety is not simple and the patient's attitude to it is often ambiguous. Asthmatic patients do not have a specific type of personality but a neurotic and psychosomatic context is common. By psychosomatic we mean reactional behaviour to the disease rather than "psychogenesis" of attacks, although emotional factors are often observed. Asthmatic patients do not live alone. They live in an environment which affects them and which is affected by them: a special psychodynamic relationship is set up, especially in young patients, and not to recognise it would be to ignore part of the patient and of the disease.