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Kubie argues that the symbolic process has a central mediating position in the formation of psychosomatic as well as of psychic symptoms. It is impossible to present his arguments in an abstract without distorting his logic and weakening his use of evidence. He reviews the four categories of body organs and processes into which psychosomatic disease may be classified. The roles of the somatomuscular and autonomic nervous systems in these four categories are described. Emotional tensions generated by psychological experiences are expressed by the symbolic processes of speech, language, and sensory imagery. These tensions can also be expressed by 'the language of the body' (disturbance of sensation or of somatomuscular or vegetative functions). Conversion hysteria, somatization, and organ neurosis are metaphors which are descriptive rather than explanatory statements. Every conceptual unit is rooted both in the 'I' and 'non-I' worlds. Kubie states: 'The symbol itself may constitute the bridge between these alternative and often simultaneous channels for the expressions of internal tensions. In other words, it is the symbolic process, with its multipolar conscious, preconscious, and unconscious linkage, which provides us with projective pathways for language and distance imagery at the one end, and introjected pathways for somatic dysfunction at the other.'
Kubie tells of Dr. Wilder Penfield's stimulation of the temporal lobes which produced a broad array of exteroceptive and interoceptive data. MacLean's work complements this. The 'visceral brain' constitutes a crossroads or association