A case study is presented of a 43-yr.-old male patient suffering from benign essential hypertension and angina pectoris. He had had a cerebral hemorrhage several months earlier but function of the affected side had returned. A personality study showed that the patient had a strong need to assert his masculinity and could not take direction from an authoritative figure. This pattern first developed in his childhood relationship with his father. Hostility resulting from conflict with external authority was temporally related to the onset of hypertension and to the major complications which developed. Relationship therapy brought about symptomatic improvement and made it possible for the patient to pass through 2 stressful life situations without progression of his disease.