Hidden Affects in Somatic Disorders: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Asthma, Psoriasis, Diabetes, Cerebrovascular [Hardcover]

Following Freud's findings, CHIOZZA pursues the concept of a language of the body, that provides a clue for the understanding of the different diseases. Once the body language is deciphered, the disease can be understood as a means of communication, as well as the expression of the drama that is suffered by the patient. This book consists of six investigations developed by the Department of Research of the Weizsaecker Medical Consultation Center, headed by Dr. LUIS CHIOZZA. The book explains the method for the psychoanalytic understanding of the patient, and of the role that the disease plays in each particular case. Thus, each patient is seen as a story in which the disease is both the symbol and the shelter of a drama that unfolds in the malfunctioning of the body.

This book is excellent. It is a starting point, which is a turning point in the conception of somatic ilnesses. This book gives us the elements to think of the specific meaning of each somatic disorder. Dr. Chiozza and colleagues comnicate findings from their many years of research (at the Luis Chiozza Foundation in Argentina) of the hidden affects in somatic disorders. The authors, following Freud, in an idea that has not beeb worked through by psychoanalysts, think that each affect has an "innervation key" - an unconscious affective structure - that determines his specific quality. As Freud said, "supress the development of a conflictive affect is the true aim of repression". Dr. Chiozza explain that the impossibility of the conscious discharge affect motivated by repression promotes the discharge of the cathexis across one element of the innervation key of each affect. In "somatic ilnesses" some elements of an affect's innervation key are more intensely invested than others. When its innervation key is thus deformed, an affect may be hidden in that it is perceived as a somatic process. It is in this sense that physical disorders are thought of as hidden affects. The author's way in exposing the research of somatic disorders such as headache, cerebrovascular disease,diabetes, respiratory disorders and asthma, and bone disorders, among others, it's very interesting and appealing. All of them hold to a similar research framework. In each disorder, Dr. Chiozza and colleagues detect a specific unconscious fantasy, which enlarges our knowledge of what happens in an ill person. I highly recommended this book to psychoanalysts and clinicians, ans perhaps we can reconsider and expand our concepts of the role of psychoanalytical inquiry in the study and inverstigation of somatic disorders.

In the six separate patient studies comprising Why Do We Fall Ill?: The Story Hiding In The Body, Dr. Luis Chiozza explores the question of how helpful an articulate patient is to the determination of why and how a somatic disorder develops, and the choice and impact of therapeutic options. Why Do We Fall Ill? will prove of tremendous interest and value to medical students, practicing physicians, health care providers, and the non-specialist general reader with an interest in the psychological treatment of "somatic" disorders to improve the outcome of therapy.