You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The term psychosomatic has been “on stage” since the 19th Century and it was related with psychoanalytic treatments and bodily (medical) illnesses. The first anxiety is experienced by the newborn infant through its body. The mother (environment) while providing sufficient care for the baby, gives meaning to the bodily excitations and opens a space in her mind for the baby. If the primary anxiety is not relieved, the infant might lose the feeling of going on being, thus forming the basis for somatic disturbances.
Hypochondria is counted as one of the types of actual neurosis by Freud, including somatic anxieties and neurasthenia in 1895. In this paper, the work of psychoanalysts within Paris School of Psychosomatics, the psychic economy of somatic illness, hypochondria will be discussed and a case vignette will be presented.