Numerous students of this subject have concluded that personality malfunctioning is unusually frequent in hypertensive persons. The general pattern of maladjustment in interpersonal relations (in such persons) has been variously considered to be habitual unexpressed or displaced hostility (Wolfe,1 Miller,2 Rennie,3 Saul,4 Alexander,5 Weiss6 and Binger and his co-workers7); lifelong emotional lability with frequent depression, anxiety or both (Rennie,3 Gold8); lifelong anxiety, perfectionism, compulsiveness or difficulty with authority (Dunbar,9 Binger and his co-workers7). The studies have rarely involved more than a few subjects and have rarely included nonhypertensive persons for comparison; hence the comparative frequencies of occurrence of various possibly relevant personality patterns in hypertensive and nonhypertensive persons are not known.
As part of a comprehensive study of hypertension, we have therefore decided to examine this matter afresh. After careful review of our own and others' experience, we have