ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a discussion of the primary challenges posed by psychogenic disorders for patients and medical professionals, contextualizing the experience, diagnosis, and treatment of such disorders. It discusses a wide range of medically unexplained physical symptoms and psychogenic disorders. The chapter focuses on the case of psychogenic movement disorders—one of the most prevalent psychogenic diagnoses. Psychogenic disorders are physically manifesting medical conditions that, lacking known "organic" causes, are attributed to psychological or emotional distress. The differing vocabularies and approaches of neurologists and psychiatrists to psychogenic disorders have a long and charged history that continues to impact medical understanding. Humoral views of medicine, which guided ancient Western medical thought and continued to circulate in European contexts until at least the 19th century, imagined physical and mental symptoms as emerging from the same causes. Some of the research will investigate attitudes toward psychogenic disorders and placebo treatments, especially from the patient perspective.
