[Relation between illness manifestations and personality structure].

Associations between various psychoneurotic or psychosomatic illnesses and personality structures are investigated empirically in this paper. The investigation is based on the diagnoses of 9377 patients who came to the Psychosomatic Clinic of the University of Heidelberg as outpatients in the decade from 1979-1988. The answer to the proposed question is attempted by means of a statistical analysis of the routinely documented diagnoses. The relation can therefore only be investigated to the extent allowed by the more or less theory-oriented view-point of the participating diagnostician. The results confirm in part clinically known relations between certain aspects of illness and personality structures. They point to an almost obvious asymmetry which has been disregarded up to now in the clinical-theoretical discussion: whereas "typical" personality structures are diagnosed increasingly more often in certain illnesses, none of the personality structures proved "supportive" in the occurrence of a certain illness. The altogether weak interdependence between illness and personality structure (diagnoses) demonstrates that both diagnoses represent--at least in part--different dimensions.