Psychosomatic medicine is an interdisciplinary medical field exploring the relationships among social, psychological, behavioral factors on bodily processes and quality of life in humans and animals.
Clinical situations where mental processes act as a major factor affecting medical outcomes are areas where psychosomatic medicine has competence.
In contrast, in contemporary psychosomatic medicine, the term is normally restricted to those illnesses that do have a clear physical basis, but where it is believed that psychological and mental factors also play a role.
[14] The review further argues that unsubstantiated claims that "positive outlook" or "fighting spirit" can help slow cancer may be harmful to the patients themselves if they come to believe that their poor progress results from "not having the right attitude".
Thure von Uexküll and contemporary physicians following his thoughts regard the psychosomatic approach as a core attitude of medical doctors, thereby declaring it not as a subspecialty, but rather an integrated part of every specialty.
[16] In the medieval Islamic world the Persian psychologist-physicians Ahmed ibn Sahl al-Balkhi (d. 934) and Haly Abbas (d. 994) developed an early model of illness that emphasized the interaction of the mind and the body.
[19] Sigmund Freud pursued a deep interest in psychosomatic illnesses following his correspondence with Georg Groddeck who was, at the time, researching the possibility of treating physical disorders through psychological processes.
[21] In the 1970s, Thure von Uexküll and his colleagues in Germany and elsewhere proposed a biosemiotic theory (the umwelt concept) that was widely influential as a theoretical framework for conceptualizing mind-body relations.
Farzad Goli further explains in Biosemiotic Medicine (2016),[23] how signs in the form of matter (e.g., atoms, molecules, cells), energy (e.g., electrical signals in nervous system), symbols (e.g., words, images, machine codes), and reflections (e.g., mindful moments, metacognition) can be interpreted and translated into each other.
[25] He proposed that psychosomatic illnesses in humans largely have their source in the constraints that society puts on individuals in order to maintain hierarchical structures of dominance.
[27] Dr. Candace Pert, a professor and neuroscientist who discovered the opiate receptor, called this communication between our cells the ‘Molecules of Emotion' because they produce the feelings of bliss, hunger, anger, relaxation, or satiety.