Aim of this study was to gain insight into the argumentation of the psychiatrist in accepting (or rejecting) a possible psychological origin of undiagnosed somatic complaints. The study was based on the psychiatric records of 223 somatic in-patients with functional complaints. All patients were during their stay in the hospital seen by a psychiatrist. A description of some demographic and psychiatrie characteristics of the patients is followed by a detailed discussion of the relative differences on a number of variables between four subgroups and the total population of patients. The most important conclusions were:
1. Patients who were diagnosed as 'psychosomatic', i.e. with psychogenic complaints (56% of the total population), didn't as a group at most variables differ from the total population of patients;
2. The view of the patients themselves as expressed in the beginning of the interview, about a possible relation between their complaints and emotional stress was of course of great importante for the opinion of the psychiatrist;
3. The frequency of anxiety-states was higher than expected in patients who associated their complaints and emotional stress, and lower in patients who denied such a relationship. These correlations were absent with depressive patients;
4. Verification or falsification of the hypothesis that somatic complaints have a psychological origin is only possible in the universe of the individual patient.