PSYCHOGENIC FACTOR IN ASTHMA

There are certain cases of asthma, Strauss¹ says, which for various reasons (e. g., the mode and age of onset or the inability to demonstrate sensitivity to any special allergens) appear to be predominantly psychogenic in the sense of "complex determined." With this view scarcely any one will disagree, especially when qualified by repeated emphasis of the fact that one cannot talk correctly about "true asthma" and "psychogenic asthma," implying thereby that psychic mechanisms play no part in one and are solely causal in the other. An attempt to evaluate the psychogenic factor has, however, been begun at Guy's Hospital and is the subject of two recent preliminary reports.

In the report by Rogerson² and his co-workers it was shown that, when patients with this symptom complex and their environment were considered from the psychiatric point of view a number of interesting facts emerged which showed that the