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These lectures represent a distillation of the authors’ experiences in teaching physicians and paramedical personnel at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston and at the Harvard Medical School the understanding and management of psyhological factors in physical illness. The authors believe that the practice of comprehensive medicine requires a
deeper undertsanding of the patient's personality, not only in well known psychosomatic conditions (peptic ulcer, hypertension, etc.), but in all patient-physician contacts. Every threat to his well-being is an anxiety-producing trauma of some degree, and each patient has to be understood and treated in terms of his own personality makeup.
The authors suggest, and demonstrate in their case material, that a type of brief, manipulative psychotherapy, which they refer to as “medical psychotherapy,” can be learned by non-psychiatric physicians and applied to their patients, except for cases with deep-seated psychological disturbances. Such medical psychotherapy is based on the patient's existing character structure. Therapy tries to make better use of the patient's adaptive potentialities, without intruding into or attempting to change his basic personality.
The book consists of fifteen lectures. The first two are introductory and provide an overview of basic psycho-dynamic principles related mainly to the process of childhood development and environmental adaptation. A short historical review is presented of various theories of personality, from Aristotle to Freud. The authors’ orientation is Freudian, and they present a sketchy outline of the Freudian theory of personality development. Technical terms are held to a minimum, and the book reads easily.
The bulk of the book deals with the various personality types and their basic psychodynamics, and suggestions for their management by medical psychotherapy. The theoretical discussions are sometimes repetitious, but the clinical cases presented (out of childhood, adolescence and adult li