Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-gtxcr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T13:25:39.637Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Psycho-Somatic Unity—A Few Practical Inferences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

Extract

The fact that in the course of many neuroses there occur associated feelings of inferiority of a bodily nature, as well as the fact that there are neuroses originating in disturbances of bodily functioning—organ neuroses—compels us to scrutinize our hitherto accepted ideas of the nature and meaning, both of the somatic and of the psychic analysis of the latter. This need is based not merely on speculative grounds and on clinically or experimentally determined facts of recent medical research, but also in reference to the conceptions of modern physics and the views due to advances in zoology and biology. The accurate observations of these scientific disciplines and the inferences drawn from them no longer allow us to consider the somatic as merely secondarily informed by the psyche or as though inspired by a psychic act of projection. Just as the “wave “of the physicist is as much the carrier of the same primeval essence as is the “atom”, so also the world of organic forms has not been constructed secondarily by the conscious thinking spirit; on the contrary—apart from the aberrant (?) adaptations—we must recognize a prototypical pattern (?) also throughout the plant-animal kingdom. We have to recognize an aesthetic controlling principle that belongs to the somatic as such and is innate with it. The great creative artists have always sought for this essential pattern.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1938 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.