Psychosomatic research

Forty Years of the Journal

3

EDITORIAL

PSYCHOSOMATIC RESEARCH (This editorial is reprinted from the first issue of the journal in 1956.) Psychosomatic medicine is not, in its essential features, a new science. Historically, the psychosomatic approach to clinical problems can be traced to ancient times, and indeed formed a prominent part of Hippocratic medicine. As a field of research, however, psychosomatic medicine has mainly developed during the past two or three decades. Psychosomatic medicine has as its objective the understanding of man, neither as an exclusively physical nor as an exclusively psychic being, but as an integrated totality. The term psychosomatic medicine is not altogether satisfactory, as it connotes a duality of body and mind rather than a body-mind unity. As yet, no satisfactory alternative term has been generally accepted to denote the modern conception of the field of psychosomatic medicine as comprising both body-mind unity and the organismenvironment continuum. It may therefore be preferable to speak of a psychosomatic attitude, approach, or tendency with regard to medicine, rather than psychosomatic medicine as a special subject. It is not, and never has been, a speciality, but is a method of approach applicable to the whole field of medicine. It is indeed to be hoped that any semblance it has to being a separate discipline will disappear when its facts and principles are fully assimilated into the practice and teaching of general medicine. While considerable advances have already been achieved by the application of modern methods and techniques to the study of many aspects of psychophysical relations, the amount of exact knowledge of psychosomatic and somato-psychic interactions is still very meagre. Nowhere in medicine is there such a contrast between the wide span of theories and their narrow factual basis. Psychosomatic medicine at present suffers from a surfeit of unverified or inadequately validated hypotheses and a paucity of established facts. The paucity of factual knowledge concerning the interaction between psyche and soma in health and disease is the more conspicuous now because, as a result of the intensive work of the past half-century, our knowledge in both the psychic and somatic field has grown and deepened considerably. Failure to apply appropriate scientific methods has been largely responsible for impeding progress in the study and understanding of psychosomatic interactions. The conviction that a suitable methodology is the first prerequisite for further advances in psychosomatic medicine in its present stage of development, forms one of the main reasons why the editors have started this new journal and named it a journal of research. For the future advancement of our knowledge of psychosomatic relationships, it will be necessary for workers in the field to keep as conscious objectives the need for the careful framing of hypotheses and their testing by well-planned experiments, utilizing all necessary controlled procedures and statistical methods. It is the constant endeavour to prove or disprove which has brought science to its present triumphal development, and which we hope will also ultimately bring more light into the darkness which still envelops many of

Forty Years of the Journal the problems to which this journal will be devoted. It is not intended to apply strict limits to the scope of matter published in the journal. The scope is intended to include, for example, controlled clinical investigations, animal or human experimental work, and relevant studies from related fields such as psychology, sociology, and anthropology. The editors will aim at being eclectic and will welcome, from any field of investigation, contributions which either serve to advance our knowledge of psychosomatic relationships or help in the development of improved methods and techniques in psychosomatic research. Denis Leigh and colleagues