Psychosomatic Condition. Neuroses of the Bodies. Psychoanalytic Therapy of Organ Neuroses

As there is a huge diversity of the phenomena referred to as organ-neurotic symptoms, it is meaningless any general statement about the effectiveness of psychoanalytic treatment of such diseases. There are states that have become so “organic” that requires immediate “somatic” treatment. But whenever the symptoms are a consequence of stable unconscious attitudes, psychoanalysis is shown for the transfer of these facilities in mind that means to overcome them.

Freud argued that the organ-neurotic symptoms are amenable to psychoanalysis, by not a direct, but a roundabout way. If psychotherapy or psychoanalysis eliminates anxiety or other impediments to the adequate discharge of impulses, indirect symptoms disappear spontaneously.

The shift function can not be subjected to psychoanalysis, because he has no unconscious meaning. However, the installation, which caused a shift, is amenable to psychoanalysis, if this setting is overcome and it is eliminated the state of the damming of libido, the effects vanish too. It is clear that the painful installation or blocking the discharge, rather than the symptom, is the subject of analysis. First, by using a probe analysis it is necessary to assess the relative importance of aetiological factors and to establish the unconscious dynamic diagnosis. Hysteria with symptoms, restricted to a single body, of course, is not more difficult to analyze than any hysteria, but the convergence of organ neurosis from psychosis prognosis becomes less favorable.

With regard to treatment of pathoneurosis, some of them, according to their nature, occur acutely and recovery occurs spontaneously, when is the main medical condition. If the medical condition was the factor that provoked the true neurosis or psychosis, treatment depends on the type of mental disorder.
Hypochondria is subject to the general rule: the more hysteroform is the clinical picture (hypochondria simply represents a castration anxiety), the more favorable the prognosis is, the greater the narcissism, the more uncertain outlook. In severe hypochondriacal neurosis patients’ ability to transfer is as low as in psychosis.

The possibility of normalizing the economy is determined by the willingness of libido of the patient to establish the primacy of the genitals. Whoever has in the development of genitalia has not given priority, during therapy falls into a difficult position. The decision on the application of psychoanalytic treatment in such cases depends on the patient’s ability to develop and transfer his genital maturity. These factors are found out only through a trial of psychoanalysis. In cases of doubt, psychoanalysis soon shows. Many patients with these disorders do not lend themselves to other psychotherapeutic techniques, and psychoanalysis has at least some help.