Psychosomatic and Biopsychosocial Medicine: Body-Mind Relationship, Its Roots, and Current Challenges

The basis of psychosomatic medicine is a fundamental philosophical debate between mind (a subjective phenomenon that is linked to a sense of consciousness) and body (which is empirically demonstrable). Starting from the Greek tradition to the Cartesian res cogitans-res extensa dichotomy, the chapter illustrates the role and importance of a biopsychosocial approach in all the spheres of medicine as a way to contrast the still evident modern medicine reductionism. The evidence coming from biological, psychological, and social science, merging in biopsychosocial (or psychosomatic) integrated view in medicine, is also discussed. Although the term psychosomatic can be misleading, since, as Alexander underlined in the first issue of the journal Psychosomatic Medicine in 1939, it may imply dichotomy between psyche and body (soma). If however we understand psychic phenomena as nothing but the subjective aspect of certain bodily (brain) processes, this dichotomy disappears, becoming medicine of the whole person, away from scientistic reductionism and toward the embrace of the complex in clinical practice.