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This paper bound monograph is a rather extensive and intensive study of asthma from the medical (allergy) and psychogenic aspects. It is the result of a four year cooperative study. The clinical material consists of 27 cases treated by the psychoanalytic method for a period from two weeks to forty-three months. The first part is a discussion of asthma from the point of view of the allergist (B. Z. Rappaport and R. Hecht.) They say, “The close collaboration of the allergist and analyst in each case studied is necessary for an evaluation of the role of psychogenic factors in asthma.”
The second and third parts are by French and constitute a review of the literature on psychogenic and emotional factors in asthma. It is material that is well summarized by French and hence his summaries are here given. He says, “—there seems to be fairly general agreement among allergists that psychological and allergic factors may easily stand in a supplementary relationship to each other. In many cases at least it is not a question of either an allergic or a psychological etiology but of some sort of cooperation between them”. “Summarizing this rather voluminous literature, we gain the impression that attacks of bronchial asthma seem to be associated with a very considerable variety of emotional conflicts. Outstanding among these are the suppression of any sort of intense emotion, threats to dependant relationships and to the security based upon them, and sexual conflicts. The outstanding personality traits of asthmatic children seem to be over anxiety, lack of self-confidence and a clinging dependance on the parents which appears to be a reaction to a tendency to over solicitude upon the part of the parents.”
The fourth part is by French who studies and summarizes the psychogenic factors in the asthma attack in the group of twenty-seven cases under study. He says “Asthmatic attacks tend to be precipitated by situations that threaten to separate the patient from some mother figure. The s