ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that non-symbolizing and non-mentalizing mental functions because the significant psychic deficits often are at the root of the patient's inability to self-regulate stress, which leads to behavioral and physical illness. Non-symbolizing and non-mentalizing patients with psychosomatic disorders tend to be concrete in their mental processes. The chapter presents a psychoanalytic treatment of a man with fibromyalgia who was motivated to develop his own individuated mind. The central sensitizing disorders appear to be neurobiological stress dysregulation disorders of bio psychosocial origin. The neurobiological development of central sensitization changes the way the brain perceives pain and stress in response to repetitive noxious stimulation. Psychosomatic patients present on a neurodevelopmental continuum and, therefore, have dimensional disorders. In central nervous system neurodevelopment, the determinants of the eventual structure of axonal growth and neural connections are thought to be both genetic and environmental. Central sensitization is a disorder of complex biopsychosocial origin, and as yet remains a somewhat mysterious entity.
