Thanks for the link, daylia, the Wikipedia article gave me something to think about, and raises more questions in my mind. If, for instance, someone has an allergic reaction which is psychosomatic, you would still respond to it with an antihistamine? It makes sense that you would, because physical symptoms are still physical symptoms no matter how or why they were triggered, and the antihistamine would address the physical symptoms. Obviously, you wouldn't sign them up for twice-weekly therapy, instead. But it seems like an inadequate response, to just treat the symptoms and not the *cause*. And it also seems as though there's the possibility that the antihistamine wouldn't necessarily work, if the 'mind' were to override it.

It seems like the 'psychosomatic' or 'hysterical' illness label still puts the blame on the sufferer. "You're doing it to yourself."
It puts the sufferer in the 'crazy/lazy' box, which helps no one. It seems like a dead end.

Myss and Northrup, who I mentioned before, seem to have a different take on this, but I don't know if I understand it any better. It seems to boil down to if you get sick it might be because you're unhappy, and you can help yourself to heal by removing the spiritual poisons from your life (I'm paraphrasing,) which, anecdotally at least, seems to involve divorcing your husband and/or telling your mother to go to hell. It's still all in your head, but not in a blaming or dismissive way - intended to be more empowering. And they don't rule out a medical approach, but seem to suggest that the medical approach alone might not be sufficient.

Little Hawk started a thread a while ago, My Simple Plan for Salvation where he said something about being yourself, which I think is about being *true* to yourself, which ties in here somehow.

About what Wolfgang and others were talking about, the relationship between stress and illness, and the difficulty of deciding what constitutes "good" stress as opposed to "bad" stress, I wish I had something to contribute. I know people who complain about being "stressed out" who nonetheless seems to thrive on it, but it still takes it's toll in the long run. Without the stress they might operate at a lower level, or a slower speed, so they need the pressure to be raised one way or another in order to perform at what to them is an acceptable level. I used this device in college, when I procrastinated about writing long papers until the pressure was almost unbearable - the force of that pressure could sometimes produce a twenty page paper overnight. I don't think it was healthy, but it sure made things "exciting".