ABSTRACT
T he reason i have been emphasizing the patient’s will to believe, and the doctor’s ability to inspire, is that from one-third to one-quarter of all diseases a family doctor sees are probably of psychological origin: that is, they arise in the mind and can be cured with the therapeutic power of the consultation. Here we strike a new note. Until now this book has been concerned with organic diseases, diseases of physical origin—infections, tumors, heart failure. These all arise from some external invasion of the body or from some physical deterioration, such as hardening of the arteries. But the symptoms that most people experience on a week-to-week basis have little to do with tumors and scarlet fever, which are catastrophic, exceptional events. They are more likely to be diarrhea, skin rashes, and loss of appetite. And many of these kinds of symptoms arise not from some physical pathology in the intestines, the skin, or the stomach, but from signals being sent to these organs by the mind. Thus, much of what a family doctor sees in daily practice is “psychogenic.”
