The first of these studies sampled the symptoms observed by psychiatrists in an urban population (N = 283). The second gathered information obtained from the treating doctors of inhabitants of a rural area (N = 318). All subjects, in both inquiries, were randomly selected. We considered the former data as subjective and the latter as objective. Each of these two samples were subdivided in two parts: the first subsample grouped those subjects who complained of cardiovascular disorders and the second subsample clustered those subjects who complained from other somatic ailments, excluding cardiovascular troubles. This procedure provided us four independent samples: (1) Those who had subjective cardiovascular complaints; (2) those who had objective cardiovascular diseases; (3) those who had other subjective somatic complaints; (4) those who had other objective somatic diseases. In each of these four subgroups we computed the frequency of psychiatric symptoms, we intercorrelated all the symptoms and we factor analyzed them. Our major findings lead to the following tentative conclusions: Cardiovascular complaints are not linked with a special psychiatric symptom-pattern. This finding weakens the opinion of other researches in this field. Cardiovascular complaints seem to be concomitant with a weak defense mechanism against anxiety. Allergy seems to be more effective to overcome anxiety than other forms of somatisation. Cardiovascular disorders occur in a small amount of people who operate a narcissistic investment of their cardiovascular symptoms or who seek neurotic compensation in overfeeding.
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