What is Psychosomatic Medicine?

To us a psychosomatic disorder is one in which emotional factors are a major aetiological determinant, of which the patient is unconscious or only partly conscious; the pathway through which Mind (psyche) affects the Body (soma) causing dysfunction or structural damage is wholly unconscious. The link is always internal, psycho-neuro-endocrinological, psycho-neuro-immunological, via the autonomic nervous system or via striated muscle innervated by the voluntary nervous system, as for example disorders of motor co-ordination (breathing and swallowing) and of muscular tone and posture.