Psychosomatic Medicine and Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry in the United States

Abstract

The United States is a diverse country where many different ideas, traditions, and practices are introduced, intermingle, interact, recombine, evolve, and develop. It is where the East and West, North and South, meet, interact, and flourish. Psychosomatic Medicine was introduced into the US from Europe by emigres such as Franz Alexander, giving rise to both psychosomatic research and the practice of psychodynamic principles in the general hospital, the beginnings of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry. American pioneers such as Flanders Dunbar at Columbia University and George Engel at University of Rochester consolidated the field of psychosomatic medicine/consultation-liaison psychiatry. Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry eventually redefined itself as psychiatry practiced in the general hospital setting with emphasis on co-morbidities of psychiatric and other medical conditions and collaborative and integrated care of patients with such patients. In terms of research, psychosomatic research evolved into comprehensive research concerning various social and psychological factors interacting with pathophysiology, biochemistry, genetics, epigenetics, as well as the role of information (memes) in the processes. In a sense, then, "psychosomatic" research is supplanted and replaced by such new fields as psychoneuroendocrinology, psychopharmacology, epigenetics, memetics and information research, and neuroscience in general. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)