Introduction  
Amongst numerous known factors, personality characteristics/traits also play an important role to make the person susceptible for cancer. In this context, the body constitution nomenculated as ?PRAKRITI? has been used in Ayurvedic literature relating to health and disease.

Sushruta, following the Samkhya concept of human personality, also is of the opinion that the origin of psychosomatic constitution related from cosmic process.

According to Charaka, the psychic dimensions of human constitution has three aspects namely, ?manas' ?ahamkara', and ?buddhi'. He emphasised the study of ?Antahkaran' because all the psychological functions are dependent upon this important organ of the body.

The propounders of Ayurveda have clearly recognised the distinction in human constitution and the inter-individual and intra-individual differences in psychological and moral disposition and his relation to socio-cultural and geographical environment.

Following the Samkhya concept of Trigunas, all the classic literature of Ayurveda have classified human temperament on the basis of relative predominance of Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. Trigunas are three potentialities which express themselves when they are disturbed.

Thus the three terms Sattva, Rajas and Tamas can be translated as Cognition, Action and Inertia. The apparent variations in the inter-individual as well as intra-individual psychological behaviour are due to the relative expression at a given movement of the trigunas in the Sharira(Body). 

Mula Prakriti has been described in relation to creation of universe, whereas Doshic Prakriti has been condensed the individual character. The word Prakriti when used as a part of compound word, there its sense is a little different like ?PRAKRITISTHANA' which means one in a normal state.

It is also used in the sense of contrary to ?VIKRITI'. However , the present study is related to the ?MANSIK PRKRITI' categorised as Satwik, Rajsik and Tamsik personality. 

The present study purports to ascertain whether the individuals possessing some specific ?Prakriti' are more susceptible to cancer. The study also proposes to examine the changes which the cancer patients undergoes upon diagnosis and subsequently upon surgical removal of the important part of the body. 

Method
100 patients admitted to S.S.Hospital, B.H.U., Varanasi participated in this study. The patients suffering from various types of cancer. The age of the patients with malignant and non-malignant cancer ranged from 35 to 63 years, with a mean age of 50 years. 

Measures
The essence of the study being psychological. Initially rapport was established with the patients and gained their confidence prior to administration of the Personality Scale, developed and standardised by the authors.

Results & Discussion
The obtained data statistically analysed in terms of the Mean, Standard Deviation and t-ratio. The obtained results are recorded in Tables 1-3. The results recorded in Table 1 make it apparent that cancer patients are identical to normals with regard to some of the personality characteristics such as memory, intelligence, truth, sleep, friendship, greediness, abandonment, jealousy, religious, theismism, academic, artistic, pride and gratefulness. 

But at the same time, the results of the present study (Table 2) also clearly indicate that cancer-group significantly differ from the normal group with respect to some of the psychological characteristics, such as anger, arrogance, revengeful, materialism, anxiety, allurement, kindness, courage, tolerance and patience.

The individuals suffering from cancer rated lower on kindness, tolerance, courage and patience and scored higher on the measures of arrogance, revengefulness, anger, anxiety and materialistic in comparison to the normal subjects. 

The results make it apparent that cancer patients showed markedly higher tendency for negative or dysfunctional personal characteristics such as arrogance, revengefulness, anger, anxiety, allurement and materialistic and lower tendency for positive or functional characteristics (e.g., kindness, tolerence, courage and patience) as compared to the persons free from cancer.

The effect of these special tendencies and deviations in psychological features of the cancer patients and their psychology might have been responsible for developing this fatal disease among them.

The analysis of the obtained data yielded (Table 3) that the cancer patients possess more characteristics, which constitute ?Rajas' and ?Tamas' Prakriti (Personality) than the normals.

The results enable us to conclude that the individual with ?Rajas' and ?Tamas' personality structures are more prone to cancer. To finally conclude, we may say that the cancer patients have their own psychology markedly different from that of normals. 

However, the findings of the present study provide only a background and insight to plan further investigation in this direction. Further studies on large sample will prove the reliability of the findings of the present study. The researchers must also ascertain whether these behavioural characteristics of cancer patients are the cause of their disease or the consequents of it. 

Table 1 :  Comparison of Normal and Cancer groups with regard to their Personality characteristics

 

Personality	Cancer Groups		Normal Groups		t
Characteristics	Mean	S.D.	Mean	S.D.
Memory	16.12	2.41	14.24	4.52	1.86
Intelligence	18.64	2.68	19.80	2.28
1.49 Truth	18.16	1.82	18.49	1.80
0.66 Sleep	15.12	3.46	14.24	2.86
1.00 Friendship	20.28	3.63	22.00	2.06
0.34 Greediness	13.00	2.77	12.92	1.62
1.26 Abandonment	16.52	2.66	17.36	1.89
1.30 Jealousy	13.48	2.83	13.12	2.57
0.48 Religion	16.24	2.40	16.28	3.01
0.76 Theismism	17.36	6.83	16.88	3.17
0.32 Academic	20.60	6.04	21.84	2.95
0.89 Offspring	22.40	2.66	22.28	2.82
1.55 Artistic	12.24	3.16	12.80	3.92
0.41 Pride	12.92	3.71	13.88	3.16	1.00
Gratefulness	22.80	1.79	22.40	3.48	0.52

 

Table 2 :  Comparison of Normal and Cancer Groups with regard to their Personality Characteristics