A study of the relationships among Type A behavior pattern, alexithymic tendency and stress diseases.

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This research was intended to study the relationships among Type A behavior pattern, alexithymic tendency and stress diseases. A newly constructed question list was administered to psychosomatic patients and healthy subjects. Egogram and Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) were administered to psychosomatic patients. The responsiveness of the dopaminergic system of the hypothalamo-pituitary gland was measured in all psychosomatic patients by examining the effect of bromocriptine on serum growth hormone level. Patients were classified as either responders (normal function) or non-responders (dysfunction) based on their secretion patterns of serum growth hormone levels.Statistical analysis that compared responders and non-responders revealed no significant differences on the scores of Egogram. On the MMPI,the only regular scale revealed a tendency of significant difference between the two groups was the depression scale. This result indicated tant non-responders showed less emotional disturbance---for example less complaints of unwellness, anxiety and tension. This results suggests why it is difficult to use self-report tests for measuring the psychological characteristics of non-responders. Multidimensional scaling of the newly constructed question list was applied to discriminate between the healthy subjects, psychosomatic responders and psychosomatic non-responders. Two solutions were extracted from this analysis. The first solution discriminated between healthy subjects and psychosomatic patients. The second solution successfully discriminated between responders and non-responders. The first solution indicates that psychosomatic patients live more stressful lives and have more active behavior patterns compared with the healthy subjects. The second solution indicated that non-responders were not aware of the stressful situation to which they were exposed.