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Psychosomatic Medicine 18:77-80 (1956)
© 1956 American Psychosomatic Society

Recurrent Urinary Retention Due to Emotional Factors

Report of a Case

GEORGE E. WILLIAMS M.D.1 and ADELAIDE M. JOHNSON M.D.1

1 Counseling Clinic, Rochester-Olmsted County Health Unit (G. E. W.), and the Section of Psychiatry, Mayo Clinic and Mayo Foundation (A. M. J.) Rochester, Minn.

In recurrent urinary retention in a young woman, several years of intensive psychiatric therapy revealed unmistakable evidence that early, highly pathological attitudes of the adults in the home directed toward the patient's urogenital functions were primary and specific etiological factors.

No dynamic generalizations are drawn from this one case, but after a body of clinical data was accumulated, predictability, was seen to operate; it was possible on the basis of the psychological situations arising in the therapy to predict when an attack of retention would develop and under what circumstances psychologically such retention would be alleviated. Only research in a number of cases will justify the conclusion that emotional factors often can be of primary specific significance in the etiology of cases heretofore baffling. It is emphasized that if and when such psychological factors present themselves as of primary significance, only considerable investigation and experimentation will determine the treatment of choice.




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