Coping Style of Psychiatric Patients with Somatic Complaints

To investigate the impression that personality traits found to be characteristic of somatizing patients are related to the more basic personality dimension of “passive-coping style,” 17 matched pairs (one patient who presented himself with somatic complaints, and the other with psychological complaints), were administered the Rorschach Test during the process of intake. Rorschach variables found to correspond with coping style in prior studies, were used for evaluating the Rorschach records of the Ss. Statistical comparisons between the total coping scores of the somatizing and non-somatizing patients supported the initial hypothesis that the somatizers scored significantly lower on the variables of active coping. Tentative explanations for these findings were presented in the discussion.