Psychoanalytic Method in Psychosomatic Research1

This paper has presented discussions of some selected issues in psychosomatic medicine with the purpose of pointing out the need and rationale for a replenished supply of fresh psychoanalytic observations of patients with medical disease. An attempt has been made to frame these discussions with the perspectives of contemporary psychoanalytic ego psychology and psychosomatic research in mind; but it has not been possible to provide more than the briefest allusions to ways in which some of these questions are being approached by other disciplines using other techniques. Nor has it been possible to consider the very complex questions that must be worked through in attempting to interpret psychoanalytic data within a broader biological context, or in attempting to combine classical or modified psychoanalytic method with methods of other disciplines in research. The answers to these critical questions will, of course, take much time, but in the interim, it is important for psychoanalysts to continue to contribute observations that are unique to the method, and to work toward clarification of the significance and relative fit of these observations within the wider context of modern behavioural science and biology.