A Brief Note on a Psychotherapeutic Technique Described by Glover and Its Application During Psychiatric Residency

Few would dispute th e ex istence o f a ge nera l tendency to blame psych o log-ical ailm ents on physical problems. For example, we often attribut e cha nges in mood to the somatic e ffec ts o f th e weather, ir ritabil ity to diet, apathy to ph ysical exhaustio n, etc. How ma ny of us can den y at so me ti me having attempted to explain to our spouses that an outburs t of temper was rea lly the fault of o ur indigestion, let us say? Of course, our spouses are rather skeptical. And as psychiatrists we too preserve a ske pticism towards th e ex p lanations of th is kind whi ch our patients so ofte n provide. T his is not to say th at we render meani ng-less th e influen ce of soma tic factors on th e psych e, but on ly to ac knowl edge that un conscious processes opera te in devious and wily ways, and tha t a psychological principle ind ependent of th ese psychosomatic relations seems to be hard at work. In extreme cases, excessive an d overrid ing co ncern for physical sta tus is un equivocall y indicative of a major psychia tric disturbance- an d the processes of denial and displacement are observa b le in purer culture, as it were. But we must not ignore the attempt at self-cu re inhere nt in such tendencies, th