Abstract

In this study we aimed to formulate a psychological framework on the origins of vegetative fever. Our sample comprised 13 patients. Concerning the structure of personality we found, that all the patients came from broken homes, that they showed pronounced disturbances in their inter-personal relationships, that they had developed an extremely exigeant ideal ego and that they strongly suppressed their aggressiveness. We were able to define two characteristic situations which can trigger vegetative fever; the break-down of the ideal ego due to external traumatic circumstances and the threat of the disolution of a symbiotic relationship. Beside the vegetative fever all our patients showed a great number of other psychological or functional disturbances. Only a few of the psychologically severely affected patients could be treated with psychotherapy. The pronounced tendency to somatize with a strong libidinal cathexis of the whole organism can be interpreted as an attempt to restore the feeling of coherence of the ego in order to avoid it's psychotic break-down (Meng).