The mechanism of allergy according to the psychoanalytic theory can be viewed as a fundamentally regressive and unstable psychopathological arrangement. Its stands in sharp contrast to the clinical « check-up » method of investigation found in the psychosomatic field.
The case of a young asthmatic girl, subjected to interviews and tests, shows how smartly the protecting-mechanism of allegy falls into place by calling on the mind’s capacities to short-circuit, for instance, the realization of having to grow old or the obligation for a young adult to accept one’s responsibilities.
Against the background of the reactivation of the pregenital and genital development issue and the various kinds of answers made to it by the adolescent will be examined the loss and gain relation between the dissatisfaction of neurotical adjustement and the choice of allergy as a remedy, the latter being regarded as a psychic and physical response at the same time.
In the course of the study will be developed the idea that the adolescent’s choice to start an allergy may be interpreted in a few cases like a potential system of protection tending to keep the psychosomatic displeasure at its lowest and considered as the triggering factor of acute asthma cases susceptible of cure.
The clinical examination of self-induced allergy by the adolescent is a very promising field of investigation to bring to light and test the intrinsic links between on the one hand the psychosomatic theory that concentrates often on the study of child and adult and on the other hand the psychoanalytic psychopathology.