The Mind-body Interface in Somatization: When Symptom Becomes Disease

The Mind-Body Interface in Somatization: When Symptom Becomes Disease represents a unique contribution to the clinician's tool chest for diagnosing and treating psychosomatic illness. This book breaks new ground by asking and answering many of the key questions that trouble every practicing clinician: Why do patients use somatization? Can we predict who will be a somatizer? Is there an underlying process involved? Why are these patients so difficult to treat?

Beginning with a discussion of contemporary disease classification, The Mind-Body Interface in Somatization clarifies matters greatly by talking in terms of chronic and situational somatization, showing that chronic patients use illness as a way of life, while situational patients somatically respond to existential crises, and revealing how both are rooted in the mind-body interface. Drawing on elements of personality theory, the authors discuss the core conflicts and character structure inherent in both types of somatization and suggest treatment options appropriately geared toward the needs of each. They describe how chronic somatization can be addressed by cognitive-behavioral therapy and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, while situational somatization can be managed with short-term existential psychotherapy.

Concluding with a discussion of medications that may be helpful to the somatizing patient, this volume represents an original approach to explaining what goes on in the mind of the somatizer.