Presented is the case of a 34-year-old woman with acute urticaria. The lesions of this psychodermatologic condition appeared in a process of remembering a traumatic event in her childhood. At the age of 12, she was sexually abused by her grandmother’s husband, a memory, she had repressed. First attempts to split off the emotional content of this trauma failed, and, in a process of resomatization, itching and urticaria wheals occurred. Finally, she could not longer deny her past and started a 6-week short-term psychotherapy. In a catharsis, some crucial aspects of the sexual assault were worked through and the skin symptoms disappeared. A follow-up 2 years later confirmed that the skin disease did not reappear. The marital tensions between the patient and her husband, however, culminated in a temporal separation. The process of this psychodynamic treatment is discussed using psychosomatic concepts such as the ‘skin-ego’ and the ‘stimulus barrier’.

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© 2000 S. Karger GmbH, Freiburg
2000
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