Psychological characteristics of patients with psychogenic halitosis

10th report. As seen from results of the Rorschach test

Abstract

This paper considers the Rorschach tests of 10 patients complaining of halitosis and falling under the diagnostic standard of Kasahara, et al. and Yamashita. The results obtained from a mainly quantitative analysis are as follow:
1) Dominance in Whole Responses (W%)
2) Perception of Animal rather than Human Movements (M<FM)
3) Dominance of uncontrolled Color Responses (FC<CF+C)
4) A reversal between the actual and the latent Experience Ealance (M:ΣC, and FM+Σm:Σc+ΣC')
5) The majority of patients with a low score in the general Form Level (R+%)
6) Number of Popular Responses (P) not different from normals
7) A relationship between the relative severity of the symptoms of each patient and results of the Rorschach test
The above-mentioned results suggest that among patients complaining of halitos is without organic basis, while there are some in the neurotic level, there is need to consider the possibility of a borderline personality structure especially if the symptoms fall under one or more of the following categories:
a) delusory attribution of halitosis to unrelated words of a 3rd person
b) subjective perception of one's own halitosis
c) expansion in the bounds of the experience of delusory character
d) strong conviction in the existence of halitosis