This investigation concerns the individual and institutional factors which play a role in the stratification of therapy and in the selection of patients. To this end, six to eight years after the initial interviews, a catamnestic investigation on one hundred patients was carried out at the Giessen Centre for Psychosomatic Medicine. Identified as variables with a potential for influencing the further career of the patient were individual attributes of the patient and characteristic features of the therapist-patient interaction during the initial interview. A step-by-step multiple correlation analysis was employed to investigate combinations of characteristics in patient and interaction which contribute to the optimal prognosis concerning the variables "admission" and "no admission" to psychotherapy. The combination of predictors is summarized in the case history of a patient in whom suffering has produced a high level of stress, who experiences the disorder as syntonic with his personality, and who possesses a certain ego-strength with regard to self-esteem as well as conceptions of alteration. Such personality traits contribute to the active attempt at finding therapy facilities but simultaneously, in the light of current therapeutic techniques, they are considered desirable qualities in the patient. Thus, there is an interference between the process of decision in the patient and the prognosis-oriented selection of patients within the psychosocial establishment.