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We have had occasion to refer from time to time to certain of the individual essays of which this volume is made up. It therefore is a
welcome task to note their appearance in two volumes, paper bound, which leaves little more to add to the psychogenesis of certain forms of asthma.
Drs. Rappaport and Hecht present the allergist's thesis but give credit to the psychogenic point of view. Dr. French reviews the literature of psychogenic factors in asthma. Here it develops how sexual conflicts of different types are involved. In the fourth essay Dr. French summarizes the Institute studies on psychogenic factors in asthma in which the actual attack occurs in place of a repressed cry in reaction to an acute fear of loss of the mother's love.
In a fifth essay Dr. French outlines characteristic Defense and Personality Structure. He writes that he gains the impression that their asthmatic patients seem to be attempting to bridge the span between infantile helplessness and psychosexual maturity in a single leap. The dream life is of significance in that intrauterine phantasy dreams occur twice as often as in nonasthmatics, again emphasizing the “seeking the mother.” Drs. Mohr, Gerard and Ross make a summary of psychoanalytic study of asthmatic children. Fear of internal rejection plays a major role in these cases. Proust's asthma was plainly of this type.
A very profitable and sound study.