Some aspects of psychosomatic functioning. Features of psychoanalytic psychosomatics

Psychoanalytical psychosomatics

Abstract

In the 50s of the twentieth century, French psychoanalysts identified and described a separate group of patients with psychosomatic functioning. These are patients with essential depression, deficiency of primary narcissism, poor oniric and fantasmatic life, practically incapable of grieving. Narcissistic losses (social status, respect) are more dangerous for them than object losses, since they lead to the leakage of already insufficient narcissism and, as a consequence, to somatization. In some patients, the news of a serious diagnosis leads to a spiritual uplift, a surge of strength, a state resembling manic excitement. However, it is fundamentally different from this and is called the psychosomatic paradox.