The same symptomatology is found in pseudo-ulcer patients and ulcer patients. The former do not develop ulcers, owing to less repression of their conflicts and psychological elaborations. This condition makes them a more favourable field for psycho-analytic research on the psycho-somatic factors in ulcers and on the different theories of this disease.

As in peptic ulcer patients, pseudo-ulcer symptoms come from genital conflicts and an oral-digestive regression of the genital instincts that intensify a cruel maternal superego (bad internalized mother), which, following the law of talion, attacks the individual with the instinctive activity corresponding to the second phase of the oral-digestive organization.