Psychosomatic Medicine 2:17-21 (1940)
© 1940 American Psychosomatic Society

Total Gastrospasm

Psychological Factors Involved in Etiology--Case Report

¹ Gastro-Intestinal Clinics of the Mount Sinai and New York Hospitals and Columbia University, New York City

In this patient, therefore, we have an individual with a personality pattern very similar to that of patients with gastric dysfunction described by Alexander. My patient is a neurotic woman with a strongly over-emphasized independence whose ego consciously rejects help or assistance from others. By an unusual series of events, strenuous emotional situations arose in her environment which probably motivated deep oral-receptive drives. These subconscious drives accumulated in intensity to the point where her ego could not repress them further, and eventually they expressed themselves regressively as somatic, gastric disease, in this instance, gastrospasm. Relief of subjective symptoms and of spasm, shown roentgenographically, followed adequate sedation.