CANCER-PRONE PERSONALITY AS A CAUSAL ATTR IBUTION - AN EXPRESSION OF THE SPREAD OF A MALADAPTIVE DISEASE

In psycho-oncology, the concept of a ''cancer-prone personality'' has gained some attention. This notion means that persons who try to stay pseudo-normal in spite of severe life stress, suppress negative emotio ns, particularly anger, and sacrifice themselves for other people with out uttering any personal demands, are at a high risk to develop cance r. However, it has been demonstrated by previous research that feature s o the cancer-prone personality could only be found if the ill person was convinced to suffer from cancer, irrespective of what the factual diagnosis was. Thus it can be concluded that at least some aspects of the so called cancer personality might be the results of coping with the belief of having cancer. The present study had the objective to de scribe causal attributions to psychosocial factors in cancer patients, and to find out if these were connected with emotional state and copi ng. N = 120 newly diagnosed lung cancer patients were included in the study. The instruments consisted of a semi-structured interview, a che ck-list of subjective causal factors, self-reports and interviewer rat ings on emotional state and standardised questionnaires about depressi on and coping. Patients who made a psychosocial causal attribution pro ved to suffer from greater emotional distress, to be more depressed an d less hopeful than other patients. This difference seemed to be media ted by a depressive way of coping with the illness (brooding, wranglin g). Thus, an attribution of the illness to psychological factors seems indicative of a maladaptive way of coping with illness. This result i s supported by similar findings of previous research. The question is put up to discussion if the psychosomatic concept of cancer personalit y may reflect patients' subjective theories which in turn may be the e xpression of their depressive coping modes.