What Does the Word “Psychosomatic” Really Mean?

Abstract

Students, colleagues, and lay people have often asked me: “What is psychosomatic medicine? What does the word ‘psychosomatic’ really mean?” To try and answer these questions with reasonable clarity I have reviewed the literature and given the matter a good deal of thought. The literature, however, reveals a lack of consensus with regard to the meaning of these terms, and it actually addresses the issue infrequently. Journals and societies calling themselves “psychosomatic” exist in various countries, and are presumably based on the assumption that their professed field of interest is a distinct and clearly delimited one. Discussions with concerned colleagues reveal, however, that ambiguity and controversy persist, and that some individuals would gladly bury the word “psychosomatic” altogether, replacing it with some other, hopefully less ambiguous term, such as “biopsychosocial,” for example. Yet, as a historian of psychosomatic medicine shrewdly observed years ago, even though the word “psychosomatic” is unsatisfactory, it is “so deeply entrenched in the literature that it will never be eradicated.”^{1 p 402} Indeed, so far it has resisted all attempts to eliminate it, as indicated by the fact that both this journal and the Society of which it is an organ continue to be called “psychosomatic.” This being so, another attempt to trace the roots of and to define the terms in question is called for, so as to provide a basis for a wider discussion.