This is a book that demonstrates the usefulness of psychodynamic ideas in understanding psychosomatic patients in General Practice. I hope that it will be read by General Practitioners who are not so familiar with such an approach. It should also be of interest to psychotherapists and other health workers who encounter difficulties in treating people for whom psychosomatic symptoms cause problems in functioning emotionally.

The book shows how an extraordinary man, Dr Sotiris Zalidis, can listen ‘with his heart’ and convert the understanding of somatic symptoms into meaningful communications about what is going on within the patient emotionally; which can lead to relief of physical symptoms and associated anxieties and enable the patient to recognize and feel underlying emotions. This in turn can improve the quality of the patient's relationship to himself and others.

Dr Zalidis became interested in the ‘whole person model’ when he was a student of medicine in Athens and, after graduating and coming to England,