Abstract
On the presupposition that the patients' spouses would play a predominant role in the developement of psychoneurotic reactions, a follow-up study has been made in 35 married couples from the psychosomatic, sociological and psychological points of view. The results are as follows.
1) Carotid sinus reflex was positive in a greater part of the patients with depressive, neurasthenic and conversion reactions. Besides, the patiants with certain long lasting disorders were appeared leptosomatic in bodily build and intensely reactive on carotid campression, as a rule.
2) The love-match case was more frequent in depression and in conversion hysteria, while less frequent in neurasthenic reactions, than in the other psychoneurotic reactions. In most of the former cases, little disparities of age have usually been noticed between the patients and their sppuses. It may be noted in addition, that many couples have been leading respectively long marital life above ten years, especially in case of conversion and paranoid reactions.
3) As the result of Yatabe-Gilford test, the severe personality disturbances which contribute to the neurotic reactions have usually been found but on the patient's side in anxiety reactions or in obsessive- compulsive reactions, while those disturbances have frequently been ascertained on the both sides of couples in conversion hysteria. In general, the proclivities to moodiness, selfishness, nervousness, aggressiveness and little light-heartedness have been revealed more or less either in the patients or in the spouses.
4) By means of Rorschach test, patient-spouse relationship has been interpreted as follows. In case of anxiety reactions, the patient with an intensive yet unsatisfied desire for love tends to feel his own inner conflicts, and his spouse, favorably objective and perceptive, is confronted with the patient is a certain hostile attitude. In case of conversion reactions, the patient with an impulsiveness is apt to fall ill from the poorness of reality recognition, while his spouse emotionally inhibited, who manifests an excessively smoothened personal relations in appearence, posesses a certain feeling of self distrust at the base.
