Globus Sensation

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Abstract
THE GLOBUS sensation, a feeling of a lump in the throat associated with dry swallowing and disappearing while eating or drinking, has been widely regarded as psychogenic. It was thought to be a "materialization of a repressed idea,"1 "one of the most widely recognized indications of nervous illness,"2 "a physical manifestation of suppressed emotion,"3 a "discriminant symptom of somatization disorder,"4 or a "single-symptom model for the study of conversion disorders."5 The last proposition was based on no more than higher neuroticism and lower extraversion scores on the Eysenck Personality Inventory6 in 37 women with globus sensation compared with 24 normal control subjects. The same group of authors later reported to have found significantly higher neuroticism scores on the Eysenck Personality Inventory and significantly higher ratings of anxiety, obsessionality, depression, phobia, and somatic concern in 28 women with the sensation than in 33 without it.7 Other authors found patients with the sensation to have no more anxiety and hysterical traits than healthy subjects8-10 and outpatients with otolaryngological disorders.11,12

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