Implications from an unusual case of multiple psychosomatic illness

A 40-year-old patient who developed over her lifetime an unusually large number of psychosomatic illnesses is presented. She manifested in succession, bronchial asthma, peptic ulcer, regional ileitis and anorexia nervosa. In addition to the factor of multiplicity of illnesses, this series of illnesses is of special interest because the association of a classical psychosomatic illness with anorexia nervosa has not been reported previously. In order to take advantage of the unusual series of illnesses in one patient, I utilized a novel investigative approach. Basing myself upon the supposition that the fundamental make-up of the personality remains fairly constant over time, I criss-crossed bits of established knowledge from one illness to another. In this way, I was able to derive various implications with respect to the psychodynamic, the cognitive-perceptual and the hypothalamic levels of functioning in all the illnesses.