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Fain presents the gist of Pierre Marty's two studies dedicated to psychosomatic problems and the impact these studies may have on psychoanalytic theory. At one time a biologist during his training, Marty has developed a theory influenced by biology and reminiscent of vitalism. He is concerned with the divorce between psychopathological and somatic studies of psychosomatic patients. His theory is based on human evolutionary development seen as a progressive integration of functions and experiences. The central psychic trunk is the point along which evolution tends, although there are lateral parallel branches. When events interrupt this evolutionary process, they may remain unconscious as points of fixation and as subsequent points of departure for regressions affecting the main trunk or for partial regressions affecting the lateral trunks. Marty develops the notion of reorganizing regressions and contrasts these with disorganizations, in which the death instinct becomes evident. He postulates three stages for the unconscious. The first is a stage of pure sensitivity. The second is a stage of automation and repetition, which maintains psychosomatic functioning. The third is a system of programming which maintains the organism at its highest level of evolution, but it is a very fragile stage. In extreme disorganization the sensate unconscious alone would remain. Marty