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Charles W. Patterson, MnD
PO Box 1565 Fayetteville, AR 72702

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1989;46(9):859-860.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

In their article in the October 1988 issue of the ARCHIVES, Ehlers et al¹ propose "a unified approach to understanding the etiology of depression." Their hypothesis that change in patterns of psychosocial function cause the physiologic abnormalities of depressive illness is correct. However, to consider biological rhythm change as causative seems to put a result of the pathogenic process too far forward in the chain of events.

A simpler relationship that could be more easily established by clinical studies was suggested by a school of therapy popular early in the last decade. Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy² proposed that "strokes," units of interpersonal communication, are necessary for human happiness and that an insufficiency of them leads to unhappiness. Clinical observation indicates that when a stroke deficiency lasts long enough, major depression results, much as starvation with its multitude of physiologic abnormalities results when a calorie deficiency . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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