I am delighted to announce that three papers on the history of
psychosomatic medicine by the distinguished historian of medicine
Theodore M. Brown have been placed on the Free Associations web site.
This site is part of the much larger project of human-nature.com
which includes a broad range of contents and links:
http://www,human-nature.com

Theodore M. Brown,  'The Rise and Fall of Psychosomatic Medicine'
http://human-nature.com/free-associations/riseandfall.html

T. M. Brown is an historian of medicine at the University of
Rochester in New York State. He here offers an overview of the
history of psychosomatic medicine in America, inspired by
psychoanalytic thinking and superceded by reductionist models.


Theodore M. Brown,  'The Historical and Conceptual Foundations of the
Rochester Biopsychosocial Model'
http://human-nature.com/free-associations/engel2.html

For a period in the 1960s and 1970s, the Medical School of the
University of Rochester in upstate New York was a very active
centrein the development of theory and experimental research in
psychosomatc medicine. T. M. Brown is an historian of medicine at
that university and has researched the history of the approach
-embracing biological, psychological and social levels - which
Was developed there under the leadership of George W. Engel.


Theodore M. Brown,  'The Growth of George Engel's Biopsychosocial Model'
http://human-nature.com/free-associations/engel1.html

George Engel was arguably the most original, empirical  and
sophisticated researcher in the history of psychosomatic medicine. He
certainly took the widest view of the subject, embracing the
biological, psychological and social levels of explanation. Trained
as an experimentalist, he united this approach with psychoanalysis
and, most notably, conducted a series of experimental studies on a
young girl who had a gastric fistula and ulcerative colitis.
Secretions could thereby be correlated with emotional states. This
research became the foundation for an approach to all of medicine
whereby fear of loss was seen, along with other factors, as a
fundamental cause of the clinical manifestation of disease. The
historian of medicine Theodore M. Brown here tells the story of his
career as emblematic of the rise and fall of the psychodynamic
approach to psychosomatic medicine in America.

Robert Maxwell Young
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http://www.human-nature.com