Psychosomatic Knowledge and the Role of the Physician: A Sociological View

Abstract

One of the important tasks for psychosomatic medicine is that of educating clinical specialties outside of Psychiatry to the way in which psychosocial factors are implicated in illness. There is reason to believe that this educative task is more complicated than it appears at first glance. One of the difficulties may lie in a resistance on the part of physicians to integrating psychosocial knowledge into their ongoing activities because of a threat which that information poses to the historical foundation of their role. Following Foucault's study of the origin of modern medicine, this foundation can be said to be grounded in the belief that the truth of the suffering patient is that which reveals itself in the space of the body to the informed gaze of the physician. Psychosocial knowledge confronts the physician with the need to accept coexistent realities of the suffering of illness. As disruptive as educating physicians to this idea of “coexistent realities of illness” may be, it is essentially a task, belonging to psychosomatic medicine, of bringing the physician into the circle of scientific modernity.