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Dear Editors
Marty's key 1952 paper, The narcissistic difficulties presented to the observer by the psychosomatic problem and its introduction and commentary raise at least two, possibly related issues (Aisenstein and Smadja, 2010; Marty, 2010[1952]). First, while Marty uses ‘stomach ulcer’ as one of his two modela of psychosomatic illness and even mentions physiological “hypermotricity, congestion and hypertonia and hypersecretion” [p. 344], neither contemporary commentators mention the landmark discovery of Heliobacter pylori (H. pylori) and its seminal role in the pathophysiology of gastric and peptic ulcer and stomach cancer (Marshall and Warren, 1984). This would be the physical factor that Alexander speculated was associated with the personality profile of those with these illnesses (Alexander and French, ). Subsequent research demonstrates an interaction between the H. pylori and variable stomach secretion in those subjects who develop these psychosomatic illnesses. While Gottlieb (2010) mentions the relationships between emotion and gastric secretion and also both Dunbar and Alexander's work from the mid-20th century, he does not mention these more recent advances.
This leads to the second issue. A way to account for this absence of discussing the H. pylori work almost two decades old is a significant cultural difference between French and Anglo-German science. Dyson (2006) argues persuasively that this difference in the physical sciences is due to differences in French versus Anglo-German models of how physical science should progress. French physical science has a tradition of reasoning through problems, beginning with Diderot, but exemplified by Pierre de Maupertuis (—), who ‘discovered’ the principle of least action. Anglo-German physical science focused more on experimental evidence, influenced in large part by Francis Bacon (who, ironically only wrote about empiricism). Dyson continues that this difference in conclusions about the physical world is resol