Phantasies of Tuberculosis Patients

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Abstract
How patients think about tuberculosis was studied by direct questions and also unstructured interviews. Material was gathered from 30 unselected admissions and from a greater number of patients referred for psychiatric consultation. The findings fell into 2 parts intellectual knowledge, mostly poorly assimilated; and phantasies, to many of which the patient had paid little attention. The phantasies are characteristic of unrealistic and unconscious thinking. Case material is described revealing, for example, conflicts with instinctual drives, and ideas about death, how these things influence patients'' behavior, and how, in some instances, the problems were dealt with in the hospital. Attention to phantasies about somatic disease is important to both medical practitioners in general and to psychiatrists and related clinical workers.

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