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Franz Alexander pioneered in the study of the psychosomatic illnesses beginning with an attempt to understand gastro-intestinal disorders (Alexander, 1934). He offered the hypothesis of emotional specificity which states that only patients with specific organ vulnerability will get organic symptoms under the influence of specific stress situations.
In addition, he postulated that in the case of a peptic ulcer the symptom had a specific unconscious symbolic meaning, e.g., frustrated oral-receptive longings giving rise to the unconscious wish to be fed. This resulted in physiologic mobilization for food ingestion, viz., gastric secretion and hyperactivity between meals causing mucosal damage (Alexander 1962).
Several other diseases have been recognized as being psychosomatic and have been extensively studied: ulcerative colitis (Daniels et al., 1962; Karush and Daniels, 1953; Engel, 1958; Sperling, 1957), hypertension (Saul, 1939; Schacter, 1957; Moses, Daniels, and Nickerson, 1956), obesity (Stunkerd and Wolff, 1958; Mendelson, 1964), and bronchial asthma (Knapp and Nemetz, 1960; Knapp, 1960; French and Alexander, 1941).
Some authors have postulated specific psychodynamic mechanisms and unconscious conflicts (Daniels et al., 1962; Karush and Daniels, 1953; Knapp, 1960; Germa, 1960; Weisman, 1956) in relation to these disorders, while others have concentrated more on stress as a set of nonspecific physiological reactions to various noxious stimuli (Mirsky, 1957; Selye, 1956; Dodge and Martin, 1970).
Backache, low back pain, and spinal disc syndromes have been more recently examined as psychosomatic disorders.
Asher and Brown have presumed a physical disturbance or physical