title: [Conversion disorder: psychosomatic aspects instead of psychogenesis?].
abstract: The main emphasis of this paper is on a critique of the idea still current in psycho-analysis as well as in psychiatry that conversion can be seen as a purely psychogenic process. This reductionist idea is responsible for some of the difficulties clinicians encounter in their work with patients with a suspected conversion disorder; it may be a consequence of a hysterical structure of this theory. A coherent theory of the psycho-somatic phenomenon of conversion has to proceed in a non-reductionist methodology comprising psychological as well as physiological levels of description and explanation. In this paper, these hypotheses are developed in three dimensions: a) concerning clinical encounters with patients with "pseudoneurological" symptoms; b) looking at the historical development of the Freudian concept of conversion between 1894 and 1916/17, and c) theoretically, including some concepts of cognitive neuroscience.
authors.affiliation: Psychosomatische Klinik der Universität Heidelberg.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Henningsen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003291:Conversion Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D005260:Female; D005619:Freudian Theory; D006801:Humans; D007046:Hysteria / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D010264:Paraplegia / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D010348:Patient Care Team; D011574:Psychoanalytic Theory; D011602:Psychophysiologic Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*