From Soma to Symbol: Psychosomatic Conditions and Transformative Experience

This book traces the theoretical history of psychosomatics in psychoanalysis, and with it the ways that psychoanalytically-trained clinicians have tried to understand and treat patients with complex psychosomatic symptoms. It offers a rethinking of the mind-body relationship in psychoanalysis, eschewing past dichotomies between the psychological and the corporeal, and today’s either-or distinctions between symbolizing and non-symbolizing patients. Theoretical and clinical issues are considered from a broad and integrative perspective. Psychosomatic patients’ best interests are served neither by an indiscriminate embrace of dazzling new findings, nor by discarding established ways of understanding them. This volume exemplifies an approach that takes advantage of the rich history of the past as well as exciting new work in the neurosciences. The opening historical chapter delineates the evolution of the field of psychoanalytic psychosomatics.