The Incidence and Characteristics of Patients with Conversion Reactions: I. A General Hospital Consultation Service Sample

more didactic psychiatric training, which would inevitably lay greater stress on lab-oratory findings that can most easily and clearly be documented than would the more clinically-oriented training we have in this country. The selective and specific use of treatment approaches described earlier may also play a role in this emphasis on organic factors. A final observation concerns the hospitals. They are administered in a much more tra-ditional manner than they are in this coun-try, with the patients in pajamas, on bed rest, and so on. While it may be true that this results in the patient’s being deprived of the kinds of personal belongings that contribute to the definition of his identity (phrasing it in our terms), the philosophy seems to be that if the patient has such a strong need to regress that he must be hospitalized, he should be given the op-portunity to experience the hospitalization as a situation where he is fully cared for as long as necessary. There is, however, the clear and constant expectation that in time he will resume his place in the community