POLIOMYELITIS is a disease about which relatively little is known. Every possible method of inquiry should be included in the effort to understand the wide variety of puzzling clinical aspects of this disease.
This paper presents information gathered in a study of the personalities of 14 patients, ranging in age from 14 to 35, who were admitted to the respirator unit of the Children's Hospital School. The study of this series of patients happens to have brought out a rather remarkable similarity of attitudes characterizing most of these patients. What stands out in the composite life story of this group is an unusual lack of aggressive self-assertiveness, associated with a compulsive need to please other persons and a constant fear of failure, driving the patient to extreme overexertion. In a later section, the possible bearing of these observations on the course of the poliomyelitis will be discussed, but before doing