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Was du ererbt von deinen Vätern hast, Erwirb es, um es zu besitzen! Was man nicht nützt, ist eine schwere Last; Nur was der Augenblick erschafft, das kann er nützen.
Psychosomatic medicine demands a comprehensive, reflective line of approach on the part of the doctor toward the suffering individual. It must be comprehensive because the goal of this science lies in understanding the person in his totality as a psychophysical entity. Accordingly, psychosomatics is concerned with trying to grasp the patient's psychological and social determinants and to relate them to the development of his illness. Illness is understood as a process of interaction between these factors and the patient's biological constitution. With this rationale psychosomatic medicine interprets illness as a typically human phenomenon, which is why it stresses the need to understand the mental suffering involved in every illness and to treat it accordingly.
Even in classical antiquity it was recognized that a doctor should be psychodiagnostically and psychotherapeutically competent. Let us think back, for example, to the medical practices of the ancient Egyptians: long before the time of temple medicine in Greece, patients had been treated in Egyptian cult centers such as the Terrace Temple of Queen Hatshepsut of the Eighteenth Dynasty or, somewhat later, in the Hathor Temple at Dendera. In these treatments emphasis was laid on the therapeutic significance