Studies in Psychosomatic Medicine. An Approach to the Cause and Treatment of Vegetative Disturbances: By Franz Alexander, M.D., and Thomas Morton French, M.D. (New York: The Ronald Press Company, 1948. Pp. 568.)

This is a collection of previously published papers and is based largely upon the psycho-analytic study of patients suffering from chronic disturbances of the vegetative organs. The term psychosomatic is used as a methodological concept which aims at studying and treating simultaneously psychological and somatic factors in their mutual interrelation. It is repeatedly stressed that there is an intimate affinity between certain emotional constellations (nuclear conflicts) and somatic responses, i.e. etiologic specificity. The vegetative neuroses are distinguished sharply from hysterical conversions; in the former the somatic symptoms are not substitute expressions of repressed emotions, but are normal physiological accompaniments of the emotion. It is only the chronicity of the emotional ension which leads in the latter to a morbid state. Thus in a gastric neurosis the repressed need to be taken care of—to be nursed—leads to certain vegetative responses manifested by secretory and motor changes.

The need to postulate and consider additional factors besides the specific emotional constellation is constantly in sight. Thus it is claimed that the same infantile need to receive when frustrated leads