Mother, Father & Ulcer

Peptic ulcers are about four times as common among men as among women--nobody knows why.*Three University of Cincinnati psychiatrists decided that women ulcer patients were not getting enough attention, and set out to study what might have made a representative group of them sick.

The results were surprising. Of 25 patients, aged 10 to 66, the investigators found that almost every one had been left motherless, or had been rejected or neglected by her mother. Every one had become unhealthily dependent on her father, husband or lover. Some overcompensated for their dependence by trying to reject men, but in every case an ulcer developed when the patient was rejected by the man she deemed essential to her happiness. The most striking difference between these patients and a similar group of men, the psychiatrists found, was that most of the men managed at least a superficial adjustment to their families and society. The women did not; all had profound and obvious personality disorders.

*A half-century ago, they were more common among women -- nobody knows why.

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