CHRONIC ILLNESS AND EMOTIONAL DIFFICULTIES. A review of the literature Eugenia T. Georganda, May 1984. When an individual is born with a chronic physical illness she brings with her* in the world a number of problems that are quite distinct from the problems that all individuals are faced with. She carries with her an obvious physical ailment which needs to be addressed, dealt with and incorporated into her identity and everyday living. This later need forces us to look at another aspect of the physical being, the psychological one. A human being is a biological entity but equally so a psychological -mental, emotional, spiritual- entity. When the biological entity is struck by a misfortune the whole being is affected. Until very recently the body-mind dichotomy prevented people -theorists, scientists- to see the whole and address the issues that the system, as a system and not discrete parts, has to be dealt with. The chronically ill individual is a being who lives, moves and exists in a given environment. The environment is equally affected by the individual who is sick as is the individual affected by the illness. In addition, the response of the environment to the individual equally affects the individual and her response to her illness. Thus, the circle is repeated since the individual's response affects the environment and so on and so forth. The environment is composed of a number of subsystems, such as the immediate family, the extended family, the school, the nei ghborhood, the culture, the society, etc. The bigger the subsystem the greater its impact on the whole. Also, the bigger the subsystem the less it is influenced by the smaller subsystems. The opposite is also true. In this paper I will try to review some of the major research that has been done on the effects of chronic illness on the family system as a whole and also on different subsystems within the family unit. * In this paper her will be used for referring to both male and female individuals.