Abstract
A tripartite study of randomly selected adult asthmatics is reported, observations being by means of interview and psychometric tests and psychophysiological examination while breathing both freely and against external resistance. Results from normal and neurotic controls are compared. At interview, traits of obsessionality, dependency, sensitivity, anxiety and low self-confidence were commoner in asthmatics than normal controls. In tests of neuroticism, hostility and anxiety, asthmatics consistently lay intermediate between normals and neurotics, though their scores were almost all within the published normal ranges. Breathing against resistance, only the neurotics failed to hyperventilate: episodic asthmatics hyperventilated the most. As the patients with the more severe pulmonary disorder (asthma of continuous type) revealed less evidence of neuroticism, it was concluded that psychopathology need not be implicated as the cause of the asthmatic diathesis; it is as likely that the concomitant psychopathology only determines the clinical presentation.
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