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This book, with contributions by fourteen authors, opposes the concept of 'psychogenic' disease as well as that of specificity of personality types for psychosomatic symptoms. It emphasizes psychophysiological development. Physiological changes occur parallel to psychological development, and so do regressions when initiated by stress or conflict. The functional reaction in time gives way to change in tissues; regression in the structure of a tissue results in the appearance of cell forms and of functional properties which had existed previously in the process of differentiation. Thus the psychosomatic pathology is explained by Sydney Margolin in terms of 'physiological regression' and 'repressed fantasies of function'.
Roy Grinker sees the core of the psychosomatic problem in the period of differentiation from totally hereditary to individually learned patterns and their integration into a new personal system. The development from the undifferentiated functional whole to the integrated mature individual determines the formation of healthy, sick, or potentially sick organisms. Lawrence Kubie, opposing the assumptions of specificity, shows how regressive and dissociative processes occur in the course of the decompensations which take place when any latent neurotic process becomes manifest. A great variety of psychosomatic disturbances may result from a constant neurotic process.
The late Margaret Gerard stresses the importance of emotional difficulties resulting from traumatic situations in the first months of life. Organ pathology may start here and may be regressively revived in later life. The early relationship of mother and child may create an environment that 'insults' the infant organism and