Psychogenesis and Psychotherapy of Ulcerative Colitis*

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Abstract
The author describes 6 cases of ulcerative colitis. Special attention is paid to the character structure of the patients and to the emotional conflicts that preceded the outbreak of the disease. The author comes to the conclusion that patients with ulcerative colitis seem to have certain character traits in common which causes them to react to certain external situations in a similar way. It was demonstrated that every onset or recurrence of the disease was preceded by an emotional trauma which had produced a specific internal conflict. The specificity of the conflict was formulated as an acute love loss, combined with humiliation, which made the patient feel their inferiority as a man or a woman. None of the patients had been able to solve his (her) conflict and had continued to be grieved. The author suggests that the presence of this specific type of unsolved emotional conflict in patients of this character is the cause of the disease. Four of the 6 cases improved rapidly after a simple form of supportive psychotherapy.

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