Building bridges between body and mind

This paper describes the evaluation, initial psychotherapy and subsequent psychoanalysis of an adolescent who presented with a severe psychosomatic process involving total body pain and profound fatigue. The author details the complex and multifaceted nature of the psychosomatic process as it unfolded in the treatment. The psychosomatic problem was not a single entity, but rather was comprised of diverse interwoven elements such as somatization, conversion on pre‐oedipal and oedipal levels, conflicts over aggression, sexuality, identity, masochism, secondary gain, anaclitic depression, internalized self‐other interactions with a depressed mother and transgenerational transmission of trauma. The author uses the case material to discuss technical approaches to problems that often arise in the analytic treatment of patients with complicated chronic pain and fatigue as the primary complaints. Such approaches include respecting the mind‐body split as a primary defense, speaking the language of the body along with the language of the mind and developing the verbal sphere around the non‐verbal symptoms. The author emphasizes that complicated chronic pain problems are common and can be helped by psychoanalysis as long as the unique and complex features are understood and reflected in the technical approach

Aggression · Body language · Chronic pain · Developmental psychology · Epistemology · Identity (music · Mental health · Mind–body problem · Psychiatry · Psychoanalysis · Psychotherapist · Somatization · Communication · Psychoanalysis and Psychopathology Research · Psychology · Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications

• Comorbid Depression and Anxiety in Fibromyalgia Syndrome

  Kati Thieme, Dennis C Turk et al.•Psychosomatic Medicine•2004

  Añadir item

• Bodily Manifestations in the Psychoanalytic Process

  Open Access•Ioannis Vartzopoulos, Stavroula Beratis•The Psychoanalytic Quarterly•2012

  Añadir item

• Ghosts in the Nursery

  Open Access•Selma Fraiberg, Edna Adelson et al.•Journal of the American Academy…•1975

  Añadir item

• Psychosomatic Avoidance of Conflict in Back Pain

  Stanley J Coen, John E Sarno•Journal of the American Academy…•1989

  Añadir item

• Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture

  A Kleinman•Patients and Healers in the…•1980

  Añadir item

• Health, Disease, and the Mind-Body Problem

  David Graham, DAVID T GRAHAM•Psychosomatic Medicine•1967

  Añadir item

• Treatment Preparatory To Psychoanalysis

  Open Access•Stephen B Bernstein, Rikio Maruta et al.•Journal of the American…•1983

  Añadir item