Personality pathology underlying chronic prostatitis

Abstract

Personality testing was performed on 56 patients with clinical symptoms of chronic prostatitis. The psychological methods used were RO, TAT, FAM and Beck's Depression Inventory. Q factor analysis of the patients was performed and yielded four factors representing four different personality pathologies, i.e. psychosomatic structure, alexithymic personality, borderline personality and narcissistic personality. The duration of the somatic symptoms correlated positively with the severity of the psychic symptoms. The etiology of the different pathologies expressed by the patients with chronic prostatitis was, according to the researchers, the same. All are disorders of the pregenital level and all can be interpreted as a consequence of disturbance of the first object relationships, the key factor being defective fantasy development.