1995 Volume 35 Issue 5 Pages 391-396
We assessed the usefulness of the Tokyo University Type Egogram (TEG) as a measure of ego state involvement in the onset of obesity and a predictor of the effects of weight reduction program. The TEG profiles of young obese patients were slightly characteristic, while the TEG profiles of all obese subjects and of middle-aged obese patients were the same as the profiles for healthy individuals. Thus, no psychological characteristics specific to obese individuals were revealed by the TEG. When the association of TEG patterns and increase levels in the body mass index (BMI) were examined, males showed no particular relationship between the TEG scales and the BMI. However, young females with a BMI over 28 had higher gradients of from A to FC and AC, strongly suggesting a tendency for self-negation. Middle-aged subjects with a BMI over 32 had an opposite relationship between FC and AC. Our servey of the history of disease and eating habits in individual subjects revealed that eating disorders tended to develop after strict diet control in young people. It seems likely that binge-eating, which is viewed as a problem from the viewpoint of psychosomatic medicine, is related to the magnitude of the patient's desire for weight loss and not related to the BMI. When the correlation between TEG scales and the percentage of weight loss was positively correlated with NP, A and FC in males and negatively correlated with AC in males, suggesting the usefulness of the TEG in predicting the effects of weight reduction programs in males. In females, however, the positive correlation between FC and the percentage of weight loss in young females was the only correlation observed.
