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The publication of this book signals the solid position that psychosomatic pathology has achieved as a theoretical and clinical subspecialty in the mainstream of psychoanalysis. Consisting of 16 chapters by nine different authors, it is skillfully edited as a text and casebook, presenting with clarity the techniques developed over many years of therapeutic work with somatizing patients.
The editors, C. Philip Wilson and Ira L. Mintz, are known for their leadership in this field and provide coherence to the volume as a whole.
In brief historical reviews on the various topics, the editors give appropriate attribution to their predecessors in this field, notably Freud, Ferenczi, M. Schur, M. Sperling, O. Sperling, F. Deutsch, G. Daniels, and A. Karush. The editors acknowledge Freud's deep and abiding interest in the body and the way in which mental conflict is expressed somatically, an interest that places him in the obvious position of one of the earliest psychosomaticists of modern times. Freud (1928), stated:
It is as though a mechanism for abnormal instinctual discharge had been laid down organically. …The “epileptic reaction,” [Dostoevsky's seizure disorder]…is also undoubtedly at the disposal of the neurosis whose essence it is to get rid by somatic means of the amounts of excitation which it cannot deal with psychically. (p. xv)
This elegant description of the psychosomatic symptom, linking it to classical drive theory, has not been better expressed; but to manage to influence a mother to start treatment for a “seizing” latency child who stays home from school allegedly because of her attacks is another matter, and represents the major work of psychosomatic clinicians.