Psychosomatic Symptoms: Psychodynamic Treatment of the Underlying Personality Disorder

Patients with psychosomatic diseases lack the capacity for emotional connection and symbolic thinking and the physical symptoms of asthma, anorexia nervosa and ulcerative colitis have been outside our domain. In this volume, Philip Wilson and his collaborators illuminate the lives of these patients and provide the linking "red thread" by identifying the underlying personality disorder. They reveal that behind the pseudo normal development is a world of primitive emotions and fantasies, archaic guilt and magical thinking. The authors decipher the meaning of the physical symptoms and reveal patients' capacity for intense, if ambivalent, transference. In case after case, Dr Wilson et al authoritatively analyze the perfectionims, repression, infantilization, hypermorality and unconscious pre-genital conficts with profound therapeutic effect.