ABSTRACT
To psychotherapists, presenting problems are "defenses." By regarding presenting problems as defenses, psychotherapists serve notice that the manifest content of the problem conceals as much as it reveals. The more a person knows about therapy, the more likely he is to feel that certain tensions within himself signal his need for professional psychiatric attention. In essence, forces constitute a tension between verbal facility and social reality, a tension between social sophistication and social pressures. Both social sophistication and social reality, then, are factors making for the realization that one has a psychiatric problem. Unsophisticated applicants to hospital clinics, on the other hand, abound in physical symptoms. For a variety of reasons, women without special training were unlikely to present sexual problems. The relationship between marital status and the presentation of sexual problems holds for all but young married men who are members of the Friends.
