BECAUSE of the prevalent interest in psychosomatic relations, it seemed both interesting and worth while to attempt to establish or disprove the existence of a relation between emotional status and reactivity to cutaneous stimuli of patients with functional dermatoses.
Psychiatric studies of patients with cutaneous disease have been done by a great many workers with widely varying spheres of experience, including dermatologists, allergists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychoanalysts. Valuable data have been accumulated. Among recent studies are Cormia's1 detailed observations on patients with diverse dermatoses and Williams'2 work on maternal rejection. Subjective clinical impressions, as we know from our own experiences, are not necessarily accurate, and the greatest defect of the many reported studies has been their subjectivity.
In order to attain a greater degree of objectivity in establishing the patient's emotional status and to achieve standardized data, we decided to employ projective tests. The results of such