ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the internal dilemma of the psycho-somatist. The psyche-indwelling-in-the-soma describes the successful outcome of the process of "personalization" that occurs as a result of the mother’s "handling" of her infant during the holding phase. In Donald Winnicott’s work, the use of the word “psyche” is described as the “imaginative elaboration of somatic parts, feelings, and functions” and is often synonymous with "fantasy", “inner reality”, and "self". The interrelating of the psyche with the soma constitutes an early phase of individual development. Winnicott considers the unconscious aim of psychosomatic illness to be "to draw the psyche from the mind back to the original intimate association with the soma". This “interrelating between psyche and soma” constitutes the centre from which the developing sense of self may grow. Psychosomatic illness is a symptom of something having gone wrong in the individual’s early emotional development.
