Epilogue

Although the psychic factors in physical illnesses were already seen in the early development of psychoanalysis, the majority of psychoanalysts limit themselves, following Freud, to the psychoanalytic treatment of exclusively psychic disturbances. Nevertheless, there is in Europe a long tradition in medicine and philosophy that addresses itself to the mental backgrounds of physical illness, as the prologue of this issue shows.

Since the forced emigration of many Jewish psychoanalysts, however, psychoanalytic psychosomatics has developed, for the most part, in English-speaking countries, especially in the United States. But English-speaking readers are mostly unaware of the fact that there are also publications in German on psychoanalytic psychosomatics. It may therefore have been interesting for the readers of Psychoanalytic Inquiry to see articles on psychoanalytic psychosomatics from Germany combined in one issue, as a welcome contrast to the familiar literature from English-speaking countries. This may make clear that in psychoanalysis we are in fact dealing with something that is international and transcends all cultures, the European roots of which are all too easily forgotten amidst the diversity of its most recent development throughout the world.

The issue brings together articles that meet the following criteria: (1) they are psychoanalytic in their consistent application of psychoanalytic theory and method, (2) they are clinically oriented to practical cases, and (3) they are scientific insofar as they either provide original theories for a better understanding of psychosomatic disturbances (Küchenhoff and Plassmann); use more recent theories such as the theories of self-psychology, of the motivational systems and of intersubjectivity for the psychoanalytic treatment of psychosomatic disturbances (Schöttler); consistently apply the psychoanalytic method to diseases not yet sufficiently investigated (Reich and Cierpka, Milch); describe special methods of