Psychosomatic Medicine 62:87 (2000)
© 2000 American Psychosomatic Society
Response to Book Review
R. Adler, Prof. Dr.
Our book, Psychosomatic Medicine, Urbanand Schwarzenberg, Munich, Vienna, Baltimore, 1997, was reviewed in Psychosomatic Medicine 1999;61:407–409. The reviewer emphasized a number of minor points and took arather narrow and biased look at our book, missing the following major points:Our book is not a textbook onpsychosomatic medicine, it does not address a specialized field of medicine,but is written for physicians, medical students, and others interested in thequestion of how individually experienced reality influences sickness andhealth. The book begins with a chapter on the theory of biopsychosocialmedicine, starting with the idea that environment is not something "outthere," but that each individual’s environment is personallymeaningful (constructivism), and indicating that living organisms organizethemselves in hierarchies and systems, and that they code stimuli giving themspecific meaning. The book covers many aspects of medicine: epidemiology,medical sociology, developmental and experimental psychology,psychophysiology, history taking, conversion ... , and the clinicalchapters demonstrate that psychosomatic medicine is not a specialized field initself, but a different way of viewing the patient in each field of modernmedicine.
