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The Connecticut State Medical Society, at its thirteenth Clinical Congress in 1938, held a Symposium on Anxiety Conditions. Dr. Edward F. Gildea made a statement there that provides an appropriate text for this paper. I quote: “Disorders of almost any organ in the body may be due to deep-seated anxiety. Frequently the patient is not aware of the presence of anxiety in himself. The recognition and treatment of such patients constitutes one of the most intriguing problems of medicine.”
This statement brings two questions to mind—“What is anxiety?” and “How does anxiety bring about somatic disorder?”
Everyone will agree that there is great need for simplification and clarification regarding the nature, extent, and intensity of the relationship between emotions and body changes.
Emotions are nebulous, unlocalized, totally felt phenomena with certain physiological concomitants. In general, we may accept the idea that they can seriously disturb function or that they accompany, and are part of, disturbance of function. However, if emotions are to be assigned a pathogenic role, then we must be more specific and more definite as to what we are talking about.
The responsibility for this badly needed clarification rests with the psychiatrist. We could begin by referring to one authoritative book by Dr. H. Flanders Dunbar, Emotions and Bodily Changes, now in its second edition. This book contains a wealth of research data from all