ABSTRACT
Hypochondria appears in the eye department, as elsewhere, and it is very important that the doctor should know what is happening. Many children wear glasses, or at least frequently have their eyes tested, because of their mothers’ hypochondriacal illness. The treatment of such a case on psychological lines would include an investigation into the causes of displacement of interest from the normal excitable organ to the eye, which is not in itself excitable. It should be remembered that, from the psychologist’s point of view, the eye is not just an organ of sight. Whereas in bodily phenomena things are taken in by the mouth and excreted by the excretory organs, in the building up of the personality a parallel taking in and giving out is done through all the organs of the body, the eyes, the skin, the ears, the nose, etc.
