ABSTRACT
Some physicians use the electrical conductance of the skin, particularly at the acupuncture points, for diagnostic purposes. This paper deals with the quantification of the skin conductance at some acupuncture points under well defined conditions using the electrode materials gold, graphite, silver and brass. The observed current response appeared to be best described by two exponentials.
Subject(s)
Acupuncture Points , Skin Physiological Phenomena , Copper , Electric Conductivity , Electrodes , Gold , Graphite , Humans , Silver , ZincABSTRACT
In our controlled longitudinal study of a representative high-risk sample of psychogenically impaired individuals, within a multidimensional model of mental health, the variables "life event", "social support" and "personality" are examined concerning their analysis of variance and their interdependence. We assume that a therapeutic influence on the variable "personality" causes a modified risk of becoming psychogenically impaired, and intend to prove this in terms of the altered maturity of defenses, the improved ego-functions, but also in terms of the improvement of the social network and the rarer constellation of critical life events. The modified effect on the variable "personality" is a differential offer of psychoanalytic therapy. By means of our instruments of investigation we tried to clarify if the acceptance of psychotherapy offered to resp. the motivational situation of our probands in regard to a psychotherapy covariates with certain sociodemographically or depth psychologically measurable personality patterns. There was a trend towards accepting the offer of therapy in case of high psychical and socio-communicative psychogenic impairment and in case of relatively high frankness on the FPI scale. The acceptance of an offer of therapy correlated highly significantly with the frankness scale of the Bond questionnaire extended for several defense items. The implications of this finding are discussed.
Subject(s)
Motivation , Patient Acceptance of Health Care , Psychophysiologic Disorders/therapy , Psychotherapy/methods , Cohort Studies , Humans , Personality Development , Prognosis , Psychophysiologic Disorders/psychologyABSTRACT
For the purpose of our research project the term 'psychogenetic disorders' covers psychoneuroses , character neuroses in a broader sense, and functional-vegetative as well as psychosomatic affections. So far information concerning basic descriptive-epidemiological data, especially the frequency of occurrence and the dependence upon demographic variables of the above mentioned disorders, is insufficient and controversial. Even less satisfactory is our information on the progress of these disorders. The specific difficulty with the diagnostic apperception of these disorders in particular requires field research within the entire population. Only by means of such a very expensive procedure can valid information on the true prevalence or incidence of the above mentioned disorders be obtained. Moreover, for a follow-up design each test subject must be examined several times by highly qualified experts, each examination requiring his personal presence. The "Mannheimer Kohortenprojekt" involves six hundred test subjects, two hundred each born in 1935, 1945, and 1955, selected at random from the 'normal' general population. They were examined with the aid of a structured interview schedule oriented on psychoanalytic principles and with other instruments (lists of complaints, inventories of life events, FPI-tests, etc.). Results from the first three-year investigation period include: Out of the total of six hundred test subjects twenty-five per cent are "cases". Women are significantly in the majority. Apparent is an obvious connection between different types of complaints and the social class of the test subject. Identified disorders show correlations with life events on the one hand and with early childhood disturbances on the other.
