This intriguing volume presents the most contemporary views on the conceptualization and treatment of somatoform disorders and related conditions from experts in psychodynamic and cognitive behavioral approaches. It does so with respect to both perspectives, without advocating for either approach. By presenting expert views from diverse perspectives, the book raises, what is a central point in most of the chapters, that emotion, its processing and regulation, is a cornerstone of these disorders. The volume also highlights the role of pathogenic coping or defense mechanisms like dysfunctional avoidance (from a CBT perspective) and conversion (from the psychodynamic perspective) in the maintenance of psychosomatic symptoms. The volume’s contents include detailed literature reviews on the most common—and most treatment-resistant—mind/body conditions, including chronic pain, responses to trauma, alexithymia, and the spectrum of health anxiety disorders. Noted experts distinguish between types of medically unexplained symptoms, discuss their complex processes, and provide models for intervention where cognitive-behavioral or psychodynamic approaches may be appropriate or effective. And a fascinating case study of a patient presenting multiple trauma-related disorders explores therapist resourcefulness over a course of shifting symptoms and frustrating setbacks. Among the topics covered: Maintaining mechanisms of health anxiety: current state of knowledge. Negative affect and medically unexplained symptoms. Alexithymia as a core trait in psychosomatic and other psychological disorders. Trauma and its consequences for body and mind. Embodied memories, a new pathway to the unconcious. Psychotherapy among HIV patients: a look at a psychoimmunological research study after 20 years. Health anxiety: a cognitive-behavioral framework. The wealth of options discussed in Somatoform and Psychosomatic Disorders offers health psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, counselors, and psychoanalysts bold new ideas for case formulation, treatment planning, and intervention with some of their most intractable cases.

This volume is an encyclopedic book on psychosomatic disorders, written for neurologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric social workers, and other mental and physical health professionals. It could be used as a textbook in advanced training programs for the above-mentioned profes sions. It covers the entire field of mind-body issues in psychology and psychiatry and related areas of clinical medicine. The mind-body relationship is a two-way street. Anxiety, fear, anger, and other emotional states can produce physiological changes such as tears, elevated heart rate, and diarrhea. When these changes affect one's health, they belong to the province of psychosomatic medicine. On the other hand, the intake of alcohol and other substances can affect such psycholog ical processes as thinking and mood. When the intake of substances is helpful, they belong to the province of psychopharmacology. The substances that are hurtful and adversely affect one's mental health belong to the category of addictions and drug abuse. All these issues are somatopsychic. The present volume does not deal with somatopsychic phenomena no matter what effect they may have. It deals with the physical effects of psychological issues, and only with those that cause harm to the human body. Thus, it describes and analyzes psychosomatic disorders. It is divided into four major parts: theoretical viewpoints, etiological considerations, the psychosomatic diseases, and treatment methods.

A neurologist explores the very real world of psychosomatic illness. Most of us accept the way our heart flutters when we set eyes on the one we secretly admire, or the sweat on our brow as we start the presentation we do not want to give. But few of us are fully aware of how dramatic our body's reactions to emotions can sometimes be. Take Pauline, who first became ill when she was fifteen. What seemed at first to be a urinary infection became joint pain, then food intolerances, then life-threatening appendicitis. And then one day, after a routine operation, Pauline lost all the strength in her legs. Shortly after that her convulsions started. But Pauline's tests are normal; her symptoms seem to have no physical cause whatsoever. Pauline may be an extreme case, but she is by no means alone. As many as a third of men and women visiting their GP have symptoms that are medically unexplained. In most, an emotional root is suspected and yet, when it comes to a diagnosis, this is the very last thing we want to hear, and the last thing doctors want to say. In It's All in Your Head consultant neurologist Dr Suzanne O'Sullivan takes us on a journey through the very real world of psychosomatic illness. She takes us from the extreme -- from paralysis, seizures and blindness -- to more everyday problems such as tiredness and pain. Meeting her patients, she encourages us to look deep inside the human condition. There we find the secrets we are all capable of keeping from ourselves, and our age-old failure to credit the intimate and extraordinary connection between mind and body.

Published in 1996, Psychosomatic Disorders is a valuable contribution to the field of Psychiatry/Clinical Psychology.

Twenty-nine collected essays represent a critical history of Shakespeare's play as text and as theater, beginning with Samuel Johnson in 1765, and ending with a review of the Royal Shakespeare Company production in 1991. The criticism centers on three aspects of the play: the love/friendship debate.

This book, with contributions emanating from the 21st World Congress of Psychosomatic Medicine held in Seoul in August 2011, presents the latest evidence-based information about the mechanisms, assessment, and management of psychosomatic disorders from a biopsychosociocultural perspective. Somatization is a process characterized by excessive or inappropriate focus on physical symptoms that are medically unexplained. It is highly prevalent in primary care medicine, as somatoform (psychosomatic) disorders tend to be chronic and can cause significant personal suffering and social problems as well as financial burden.​ ​

In the first section of this encyclopedic volume, Dr. Robert Kellner surveys the biological, psychological, and psychiatric studies on nine psychosomatic syndromes, draws conclusions about the complex etiology of these syndromes, offers guidelines for diagnosis, and recommends treatments based on research findings. The second section is an overview of the various processes that lead to bodily complaints, including somatization. The author discusses how psychosomatic syndromes described in the first section contribute to the symptoms of somatoform disorders and how knowledge gained from research on treatment of psychosomatic syndromes can be applied to the treatment of somatoform disorders.

The first book to put the physical symptoms of stress in their historical and cultural context. This fascinating history of psychosomatic disorders shows how patients throughout the centuries have produced symptoms in tandem with the cultural shifts of the larger society. Newly popularized diseases such as "chronic fatigue syndrome" and "total allergy syndrome" are only the most recent examples of patients complaining of ailments that express the truths about the culture in which they live.

Bernadette Höfer's innovative and ambitious monograph argues that the epistemology of the Cartesian mind/body dualism, and its insistence on the primacy of analytic thought over bodily function, has surprisingly little purchase in texts by prominent classical writers. In this study Höfer explores how Surin, Molière, Lafayette, and Racine represent interconnections of body and mind that influence behaviour, both voluntary and involuntary, and that thus disprove the classical notion of the mind as distinct from and superior to the body. The author's interdisciplinary perspective utilizes early modern medical and philosophical treatises, as well as contemporary medical compilations in the disciplines of psychosomatic medicine, neurobiology, and psychoanalysis, to demonstrate that these seventeenth-century French writers established a view of human existence that fully anticipates current thought regarding psychosomatic illness.

Patients with psychosomatic diseases lack the capacity for emotional connection and symbolic thinking and the physical symptoms of asthma, anorexia nervosa and ulcerative colitis have been outside our domain.