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Not another treatise on 'psychosomatic medicine', this, as Dr. Marcondes explains in his introduction, is a special pleading for a cause which has been close to his heart since he first began to study medicine: the need for physicians to have a greater understanding of the emotions of their patients. This charming and spirited little volume is addressed to the medical profession at large rather than to specialists in psychiatry.
One will not learn here about the dynamics of the so-called 'psychosomatic diseases'. The author is interested in what is more fundamental: the existence of an emotional element in every illness the physician is called on to treat. While this is self-evident to analysts, what worries Dr. Marcondes is that so little is done to convey this axiom to the ranks of practicing physicians and make it an integral part of every doctor's medical thinking and practice.
After describing the historical background of the organic-psychological dichotomy in medical thinking, the author recommends that the place to begin teaching the concept of the 'whole patient' is in the preclinical years of medical school, so that the student, in