The history of psychosomatic medicine (1) abounds with different conceptual approaches to the understanding of health, illness, and disease and to the care of the sick, alternative to those taken by biomedicine (e.g., refs. 2-5). The psychosomatic perspective on the universe of Medicine has gone by many different names (e.g., biopsychosocial, holistic, human, integrative, patient-oriented, psyc...

The purpose of this paper is to provide primary care physicians and medical specialists with an experiential psychosomatic framework for understanding patients with body distress symptoms. The framework relies on somatic awareness, a normal part of consciousness, to resolve the dualism inherent in conventional multidisciplinary approaches. Somatic awareness represents a guiding healing heuristi...

In discussions on the several methodological limitations in the assessment of alexithymia, uncertainty still remains about whether alexithymia and somatization are distinct constructs or whether they share overlapping symptomatology and constructs, as suggested by previous studies. In this study, 379 normal adults completed the newly developed 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and a sc...

The purpose of the present paper is to review the literature on the cold pressor test and to discuss the ways in which these investigations have pointed toward a model of homeostatic function. The research empioying the coid pressor test includes studies of psychosomatic iiiness, factors influencing autonomic response to stress, the relationship between psychological disorder and autonomic resp...

Address: 1Department of Psychosomatic Research, National Institute of Mental Health, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, Tokyo, Japan, 2Department of Psychology, Boston College, Boston, USA, 3Department of Stress Sciences and Psychosomatic Medicine, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, 4Department of Hygiene and Public Health, Teikyo University School of ...

Mastalgia has neither an organic etiology nor any definitive treatment, which affects women’s quality of life during their reproductive lives. Considering mastalgia as one of the psychosomatic disorder, mind–body interventions such as yoga would play an important role. This review is an effort to give a yogic concept in understanding the anatomy and physiology of the subtle aspects of human min...

BioPsychoSocial Medicine is the official journal of The Japanese Society of Psychosomatic Medicine [2], which was established on November 30, 1959, and now has over three thousand seven hundred members. The Japanese Society of Psychosomatic Medicine is an interdisciplinary academic society consisting mainly of physicians, gynecologists, psychiatrists, pediatricians, dermatologists, dentists, re...

Alopecia areata is a chronic probable auto immune skin disorder characterised by hair loss over the body. Though its psychological status has been debated over the ages presently we have research that points towards a psychosomatic causation of the disorder. The present review paper looks at the psychological factors in alopecia areata, the various studies and prevalence of psychiatric problems...

Accessible online at: www.karger.com/journals/pps Dr. Yujiro Ikemi, Professor Emeritus of Kyushu University, died on June 25, 1999, at age 84. With great sorrow, I write about my teacher, the late Dr. Ikemi, one of the world’s leading psychosomatists who developed new concepts, made new discoveries and gave new meaning to the expanding field of psychosomatic medicine. His contribution towards i...

For any physician, sympathetic interaction with his/her patients should remain a central concern. It is his/her task to understand the patient's hopes, fears, anxieties and social situation, as well as to understand himself and his own motives and attitudes, which can often be identified as helplessness. Continually advancing technology, rationalization, time, and the pressure for success leave...