RECENT literature has stimulated an increased interest in possible relationships between emotional and sexual factors, and onset of the neoplastic process. The range of hypotheses includes positive effects from relative severity of negative family influence,4,5 general affective disorders,4,7 sexual maladjustments,2,3,8,9 personality differences,3,8,9 traumatic marital events,4,9 and other precipitating stresses.8
This article reports selected early data from comparatively large samples of patients with a single type of prevalent human carcinoma, cancer of the uterine cervix. In general, patients with cervical cancer are shown to be less emotionally responsive, less aggregate—tending (less social), and less frequently diagnosed with clinically demonstrated neuroses than is the studied control group. In addition, although little difference is observed in general affect toward sexual behavior between patients and controls, interesting positive relationships between scored sexual affect and particular sexual variables differ in strength for