Psychosomatics Today

This book, composed of a collection of articles on present-day psychosomatics, proposes to be both contemporary and thoroughly Freudian. The object is to present in it representatives of the major currents initiated by the pioneers in the field of psychosomatics. The contributions that they offer are all theoretical and clinical, original and personal, and each one of the contributors figures in his own particular framework. It has often been said that Freud was not interested in psychosomatics, he rather showed some ambivalence in tackling this subject, he nevertheless extensively studied the different states of the body. All his papers concerning corporal expressions are in the line of his theoretical concern relating to drives. Studying Freud's oeuvre, one can describe four kinds of somatic symptoms: conversion hysteria symptoms; the somatic symptoms of the actual neurosis; hypochondriac symptoms, and organized organic ailments.