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To date, the principal warnings of vulnerability to physical disease or of its earliest beginnings are derived from physical data. The idea that relatively specific psychological cues (I shall refer to them as “vulnerability cues”) can be useful in this way has received little or no attention. Instead, interest has been diverted to the precipitating or otherwise causative role of one general psychological factor—stress.
Some years ago, I conducted a prospective study of eight physically healthy patients in analysis, which led me to believe that certain relatively specific psychological indicators were indeed useful as signals of vulnerability to bodily disease or of its early onset (Silverman, 1970). The first part of the study involved four patients, and the data collected during periods of 6-12 months were examined for such cues. The second part, also involving four patients, focused on testing and validating the indicators that had been elicited. Although the number of subjects was small, the data were not only prospective, but also genetic-dynamic in detail, as the study was done under controlled conditions, and data derived from frequent, usually consecutive, analytic sessions over relatively long periods of time. A variety of physical disorders occurred in these patients (most had more than one episode of such illness) during the time they were in analysis: tooth abcess, probable rheumatoid arthritis, upper respiratory infections, duodenitis, vaginal infection, sacro-iliac strain, rectal polyp, torticollis, urticaria, acute bacterial conjunctivitis, acute herpetic stomatitis, lobar pneumonia, gastroenteritis, and carcinoma of the breast.
I found that exposure to psychological stress was an indicator that the individual could be at risk of becoming sick or sicker than he