[Psychosomatic contribution to the etiopathogenesis of colitis ulcerosa]

In the present investigation biographic and test-psychologically collected variables in patients with chronically recurrent and chronically continuous forms of colitis ulcerosa are described and analysed. While in patients with a chronically recurrent course of the disease coincident reactions upon situations and/or constellations of situations considered as encumbrance or stress in the sense of the onset of the disease or its recurrence could be discovered, such correlations were found in less than 20 per cent of the patients with a primarily chronic course of the disease. In the latter patients, however the "psychosomatic phenomenon" according to Stephanos [16] could be observed. An analysis of both groups of patients revealed a high correlation between the factors course of the disease and alexithymic characteristics.