Psychosomatics is a direction in medicine, according to which psychological factors are considered the causes of physical diseases. Simply put, the cause of stomach ulcers can be neurosis. And hypertensive crises are very often caused by neurogenic factors.
The term "psychosomatics" can be used in a different sense, in addition to a special look at the causes of diseases. In this case, psychosomatic diseases are called far-fetched diseases. They can "appear" in medical students studying various diseases. In the process of training, applicants find symptoms of one or another disease - tremors in the muscles, pain in the solar plexus, compression in the region of the heart, pounding in the ears, severe headaches, signs of damage to the endocrine glands, imaginary hypertensive crises. When the psyche is affected, tremors of the hands, pain in the stomach, a false sensation of hardening of the skin may begin.
Historical roots of psychosomatics
The term "psychosomatics" appeared not so long ago, but this theory is quite old. The position of the unity of soul and body was first formulated by Hippocrates in the doctrine of temperaments. In his opinion, illness is a form of a person's reaction to the conditions of his life. It is from Hippocrates that the conviction that it is necessary to treat a person, and not a disease, comes from.
Teaching about temperaments divides people into four types - choleric, phlegmatic, sanguine and melancholic. Hippocrates believed that the predominance of one of the fluids - yellow bile, lymph or phlegm, blood, black bile - creates temperament.
Another founder of psychosomatic medicine was Sigmund Freud. He argued that a psychological conflict, repressed into the subconscious, breaks out in the form of an illness and creates seizures, paralysis, paresis, etc. Freud treated neuroses with the method of free association. The patient lay down on the couch and talked with the psychoanalyst, spontaneously answering the doctor's questions or words. Thus, a psychological conflict was revealed, which was the cause of the neurosis.
Neurosis is a disease, a disorder of the nervous system as a result of exposure to factors that traumatize the psyche. There are three types of neuroses: neurasthenia, obsession, hysteria. Various phobias often come along with neurosis.
Modern psychosomatic medicine
One of the representatives of alternative medicine, Louise Hay, in her publications gives a table of the psychosomatic significance of diseases. Allergies in this table are presented as denial of your own strength and a sign that you cannot stand someone. A lump in the throat indicates "swallowed" anger, inability to stand up for oneself, a creative crisis. Muscle spasms reveal resistance to new things, unwillingness to move forward in life. Stomach diseases mean prolonged uncertainty, a sense of doom.
A runny nose, discharge from the nasopharynx are interpreted as suppressed crying, an inner worldview of oneself as a victim. Fungus - unwillingness to part with the past, outdated beliefs. Pain and crunch in the neck means a lack of flexibility, stubbornness, unwillingness to look at the problem from the other side. Teeth represent decisions. Wisdom teeth problems mean that you are not paying enough attention to laying a solid foundation for your future life. Anger, resentment, a desire for revenge threatens with pain from a spasm in the clenched jaws. An obsessive desire to bite nails indicates self-criticism, hatred of one of the parents.
If a person suffers from hypertension, then many old emotional problems have not been resolved. If something compresses the chest, interferes with breathing, provokes attacks of suffocation, bronchial asthma, then there is a feeling of depression, fear of life, fear of breathing life into full breast.
Louise Hay sees the treatment of this kind of disease in the utterance of positive affirmations - statements reflecting a new outlook on life. For example, a serious liver disease, hepatitis, which, according to Louise's teachings, arose from fear, anger and hatred, will go away with the following statements: “My mind is pure and free. I forget the past and go to meet the new. Everything goes well.
