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This book represents a part of an investigation into “Family Relations, Personality Development, and Duodenal Ulcer” that was recently conducted under the auspices of the Social Medicine Research Unit of the Medical Research Council. The team was composed of a psychiatric social worker (the author), a psychologist (Mr. Kanter), and a psychiatrist (Dr. Turquet). They were concerned with finding answers to the question “what are the factors, social and psychological, that may be contributing to the increase of duodenal ulcer in our population?” As there are over a million people in this country suffering from duodenal ulcer, and probably a much greater number with related gastro-duodenal disorders, this is clearly a burning question.
The author compares the family background of 32 young men suffering from duodenal ulcer with those of 32 controls drawn from the list of a general practitioner. She interviewed the families and evaluated the upbringing of the subjects with the aim of detecting meaningful differences between the groups, and of elucidating the essential dynamics, conscious and unconscious, of the families. Her findings lead her to formulate various tentative hypotheses about the object relationships of DU subjects. Their background is largely a stable and rather specific one. The mother plays the dominant role, binding her son to her in a variety of ways, and the father is an inadequate figure with whom the growing boy, trying to struggle free from the world of the powerful mother, is unable to identify effectively. Similar trends were found in the control series, although very much less often, and this finding is discussed in terms of current changes of role and attitude in society in general. At this level of generalization these findings are familiar enough to the practising analyst who has long associated functional dyspepsia with the concept of oral-dependency conflict. However, the author's approach is a good deal more sophisticated than the above outl