EC Neurology

Psychosomatic medicine, as a special professional competence between biomedicine and psychotherapy, meets the strictest criteria for health and illness according to the definition of the World Health Organization (WHO): it is consistently bio-psycho-socially oriented. No single healing technique is in itself a tool of psychosomatic treatment, it is only in connection with the doctor's way of thinking. We argue that the main tool of psychosomatic treatment, if it wants to maintain the status of a scientifically defensible discipline, is systems theory and a balanced bio-psycho-social approach. Within the broad view of health and illness, psychosomatic intervention can then include a wide range of healing means, from words in open dialogue, through any known means of relieving problems, which we understand as a vehicle of therapeutic alliance. We consider a cure not only to be symptom relief, but above all to the mutual tuning of the biological, psychological and social layer in the patient's life on the basis of previous tuning in the doctor-patient relationship. What is the place of psychotherapy here?

 Keywords: Psychosomatics; Psychotherapy; Bio-Psycho-Social Model; Family Therapy; Narrative Therapy; Systems Theory

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