Psychosomatics: hear what the disease says

“The throat hurts from stress, myopia speaks of fear of the future, and acne appears due to disagreement with oneself or a subconscious fear of people” – these are just a few explanations that can be found if you type the word “psychosomatics” in a search engine.

In the nineteenth century, when the science of psychosomatics had just appeared, such explanations were in the order of things. Today, experts consider them prejudices. “It makes no sense to tell a patient that his back hurts because he has taken on too much,” says psychotherapist Francois Moreau. “This is a caricature of psychosomatics, an attempt by the therapist to interpret the symptom at his own discretion, without analysis.”

This means that the cause of our illnesses is not in negative emotions. But what then? From the point of view of psychosomatics, this is how internal conflicts manifest themselves, which have not received a “role” on the stage of mental life. “It turns out that my body can talk, but it tells me things that I don’t understand – that’s what patients with psychosomatic illnesses feel,” explains Francois Moreau.

If the conflict is too sharp, the psyche pushes it into the unconscious. But it is not enough to dislodge it – you need to keep it there. It takes a lot of effort. If a state of stress is added to this, the psyche has to fight on two fronts. At some point, she can give up.

The sickest in the world Carlson

“We all happen to collapse from a cold, spend several days in bed just when we are tired or when difficult and unpleasant things await us. This is the most banal example of somatization, ”explains Beatrice Lefrancois, a psychoanalyst at the Pierre Marty Center for Psychosomatics in Paris.

We can scold ourselves for dressing lightly the day before, exclaiming: “How it’s all at the wrong time!”, But on an unconscious level, we get what we lack. The opportunity not to go to an unloved job, the attention of a partner who cannot be torn away from the TV in the evenings, and parents whom we rarely see – all this disease can provide us, albeit not for long.

As a psychologist, I work with patients at the Phillip Pomel Psychological Center in Paris. One of them, a young man of 23, complained that his mother, with whom he lives in the same apartment, demands that he find a job. But constant colds did not allow him to do this.

“She clings to me all the time, except when I’m sick,” he once said. “So being sick is practically the only way for you to get left alone at home,” I suggested, which caused a strong reaction: “But I really am sick!”

And he’s right. Fever, cough, sore throat – by all indications, he has a real flu. But now it is difficult for him to accept the fact that his illness allows him to avoid the reproaches of his mother and not think about work for at least a week.

Victim of a hundred and one deadly diseases

It also happens like this: there are no symptoms, and a person endlessly complains of pain and feeling unwell. Doctors shrug their shoulders: tests are normal, no pathologies and abnormalities. “Medicine finds nothing, but it is this “nothing” that interests psychosomatics so much,” explains Francois Moreau. What is really going on with these patients?

“I remember one patient, a university professor, who retired and lost everything,” says Beatrice Lefrancois. – Relations with colleagues went wrong, the husband left for another woman, she was left all alone. She had no more students, no job, and it was at this point that she became a hypochondriac.

There are also people who seem to have everything, but they are still terribly afraid of drafts, examine the skin for a long time in search of moles, run to the clinic if their finger hurts. Psychosomatics finds an explanation for this in the relationship of the infant with the very first object of love – with his mother. If the mother is cold, does not respond to the needs of the child, in the future he may become a hypochondriac, as if looking for the reason for such an attitude in his body.

“Instead of directing their love and energy to work, a husband, a child, or some kind of hobby, the hypochondriac directs all his energy to himself, often to a certain part of his body that he considers sick,” explains Beatrice Lefrancois.

The hypochondriac does not pretend – he really feels bad, but does not understand why. It is useless to treat him with antibiotics or, on the contrary, to shout at him: “Stop inventing nonsense! Take control of yourself already.” It is important that he seeks help from a specialist who will be able to hear his true complaint and help to understand what is happening to him.

Assigned to die

But sometimes, due to psychological problems, a person develops serious diseases that threaten his life. “We can get sick from unconscious guilt or from not being able to come to terms with the loss of a loved one,” explains Beatrice Lefrancois.

This happened to her patient Rene, who, after the death of his parents, began to have heart problems. He talked about it as if he expected that one day he would go into the doctor’s office and he would tell him: that’s it, the end. Rene did not speak directly about death, but often returned to the fact that he did not see any future for himself. Every day he came to his parents’ apartment under the pretext of repairs, but he sat there for hours doing nothing, like in a mausoleum.

It turned out that Rene was an unplanned and even unwanted child. He accidentally learned about it in childhood. Little Rene believed: if his parents do not need him, then he should not live at all. This discovery was too heavy, and the psyche turned on the defense, forcing him into the unconscious. The death of his parents was a shock: Rene’s psyche could not cope with the stress, and the repressed conflict passed into the body. It took a long time for Rene to realize this. But in the course of therapy, the symptoms of the disease disappeared.

“It is important to determine the critical point in the patient’s life from which the disease originates,” explains François Moreau. “Then we can understand why the disease appeared right now, and not a year or five ago.”

By going through the history of his life step by step with the therapist, the patient can understand the meaning of his illness – and this is the first step towards recovery.