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Speculative and yet provocatively original, this paper presents a schema for further research. (Fisher has previously published studies on body image, body physiological reactivity sectors and gradients, and the development of right-left body-side reactivity with respect to sexual identity and role.) And successfully mastered social experience or process of learning may be assigned to a body sector and serves as a landmark or signal of such previous mastery. It is postulated that such somatic landmarks may respond to the need for reassurance in the face of stress and may become, paradoxically, the source of reassurance as to past mastery though the source of current painful symptoms. In support of this thesis, Seitz's experiments in hypnotically abolishing psychosomatic symptoms are quoted, with emphasis on the replacement of such abolished symptoms by others in the same somatic sector (interior or exterior, right or left). Fisher suggests that the specificity of psychosomatic symptoms can be understood readily in the light of such reactivity landmarks representing earlier mastery. The specific assignment of such reactivity to particular parts of the body is itself probably necessary in the development of identity and accounts for the emergence of the specific symptom under a stress which threatens the ego.
Even without satisfactory neurophysiological explanations of the mechanisms necessary to support the postulates, further research seems justified.