Psychosomatic Studies in Dermatology

Allergy Diagnosis in Atopic Eczema with the Atopy Patch Test

“…Graham and Wolf (1953) found frustration to be the critical emotion, and that neither hostility nor anxiety was associated with attacks. Lynch et al, (1945) found no unanimity regarding the situations, effect, or the nature of the interpretation that led to exacerbations in their subjects.…”

“…However, his perspective has received little attention in recent years. Projective studies Lynch, Hinckley, and Cowan (1945) found that for their 17 subjects, tested on the MMPI and the Rorschach, the outstanding emotional feature was suppressed resentment, on which few subjects focused and which most had difficulty in verbalising. Anxiety was relatively nonappreciable.…”

“…Five of the projective test studies (Cleveland & Fisher, 1956;Klaber, 1960;Levy, 1952;Lynch et al, 1945;McLaughlin et al, 1953) found that their neuroderrnatitis/ eczema/ atopic dermatitis sufferers that suppression of hostile feelings was a key feature. One study (White et al, 1956) found that hostility was not a feature of atopic patients.…”

“…Seitz et al (1953) found that neurodermatitis patients were more masochistic and to have strict punitive super-egos. Some studies (Cleveland & Fisher, 1956;Lynch et al, 1945;McLaughlin et al, 1953;Ullman et al, 1977) found that these patients were emotionally impoverished as a whole, not just with regard to the expression of hostility. Others (Fiske & Obermayer, 1954;Rabin & Kepecs, 1954) divided the patients into hysterical and obsessive-compulsive types, while White et al (1956) only found evidence of obsessive patterns.…”

“…In addition to the study by Lynch et al (1945) The other study that administered the full MMPI to atopic dermatitis sufferers was conducted by Haynes, Wilson, Jaffe, and Britton (1979). They administered the MMPI along with a clinical interview to 12 atopic dermatitis subjects referred from a local dermatologist for a biofeedback based treatment due to the ineffectiveness of standard treatments.…”