The book traces the historical theoretical roots of psychosomatics in psychoanalysis and, along with them, the ways in which clinicians with psychoanalytic training have attempted to understand and treat patients with complex psychosomatic symptoms.

It reexamines the relationship between mind and body in psychoanalysis, avoiding the dichotomies of the past between the psychological and the physical, as well as the distinctions of the present between patients who symbolize and those who do not symbolize.

It theoretically and clinically processes issues from a broad and synthetic perspective. The benefit of psychosomatic patients is neither advanced by the indiscriminate acceptance of impressive new findings nor by the rejection of established ways of understanding them.

The book represents an approach that harnesses both the rich history of the past and the exciting new work in the neurosciences. The introductory chapter outlines the evolution of the field of psychoanalytic psychosomatics.