[Therapeutic neglect omission of individual treatment of secondary defective developments]

The increasing application of group psychotherapy involves the danger that secondary defective developments which cannot be cured within the group, will be neglected. For these, a specific psychotherapy is necessary and particularly urgent since these cases show a tendency towards becoming chronic. Such cases include obsessional neurosis, situation phobia, nosophobia, occupation neurosis, expectation neurosis, psychogenic impotence, anorexia nervosa, and compulsive vomiting. Secondary defective developments in the majority part of patients who consult a psychotherapist. As fear neuroses, they have to be separated from wishful neurosis (hysterical neurosis). There is an urgent need for psychotherapists to be trained and given continued training in the treatment of secondary defective developments so as to be able to treat such patients.