[Personality traits of patients under spa treatment (author's transl)]

Abstract

The article reports on psychodiagnostic examinations performed on clients under in-patient spa treatment. The groups studied--patients with psychosomatic and general internal diseases--were subjected to the Freiburg personality inventory, the colour pyramid test and the progressive matrices test. The results were compared with normal population standards and clinically diagnosed neurotic patients. Furthermore, the spa treatment results of the psychosomatic patients were recorded during the third and fifth week. The most important outcome was that both groups of patients presented a series of typically abnormal signs as regards clinically relevant factors, whereby the psychosomatic patients presented a very similar test picture to the in-patient clients receiving psychotherapy. In contrast to the patients with general internal diseases the psychosomatic patients showed more neurotic personality traits than the standard. The degree of severity of the clinically diagnosed neurotic disturbances is reflected in the neuroticism test values. In the psychosomatic patients the psychic complaints, in the narrow sense, were predominant. The complaints as a whole showed a regressive trend; of the individual complaints only physical fatigue diminished markedly. Periodically recurring symptoms were not observed.