Mind-Body Problems: Psychotherapy with Psychosomatic Disorders

Examining mind-body problems in contemporary psychotherapeutic practice, Janet Finell and her colleagues introduce both theoretical perspectives and clinical realities. The opening paper profitably links psychosomatic disorders to alexithymia, the absence or deadening of feeling, the inability to identify or express emotion. Alexithymic individuals are particularly prone to disease as a result of the faulty processing of emotions that leads to cognitive deficit in coping with stressful affects. Animated case reports on specific disorders - anorexia, arthritis, irritable bowel syndrome, even (speculatively) miscarriage - balance consideration of developmental questions and treatment issues (transference/countertransference) and techniques.