Speechless soma: The trauma's language in the psychosomatic

Abstract

The study begins by approaching the psychological traumatism concept, recognizing it as an important precipitating of psychosomatic disorders. Based on studies of anthropologists, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, we present trauma as a consequence of an unexpected event from where is originated intense fear, an abruption, which disorganizes and incapacitates the victim. The Institut Psychosomatique de Paris (IPSO) works with the theory that trauma is an excessive disorganization in the mental apparatus and the psychosomatic disease is the alternative that the body finds to discharge excitation, is an attempt to resolve a conflict. The psychosomatic patient is characterized by difficulty to qualify his affections, it is observed in his super adapted speech and his linear thought, which, together, differ him from neurotic and psychotic patients. Considerations about the child development and the affects qualification are made to introduce the importance of this primitive period, but we pretend to demonstrate that they are not determinants to produce psychosomatic symptoms. When the psychological pain is intense and constant, it provokes a split between mind (psyche) and body (soma) and, in the place of the elaboration and representation about the experience, explodes psychosomatic disorders.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.