It is difficult to take an author seriously that starts off in the introduction of the Divide Mind by maligning the American medical profession for the removing the term psychosomatic from its dictionary of standard psychiatric terms and calling this action equivalent to removing the word infection from the medical vocabulary.
Quote: The enormity of this miscarriage of medical practice to what would exist if medicine refused to acknowledge the existence of bacteria and viruses. Perhaps the most heinous manifestation of scientific medievalism has been the elimination of the term psychosomatic from the recent editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the official publication of the American Psychiatric Association. One might as well eliminate the word infection from medical dictionaries.
He is annoyed that knowledgeable medical professionals have discarded the foundations of his psychosomatic notions. As I stated in a previous posting Sarno is using old notions about the mind-body connection (or as he says 'mindbody connection' ) that even his professional medical colleagues disposed of some time ago.
More problematic is the misrepresentation of 'irritable bowel syndrome' as TMS (Tension Myositis Syndrome) - a psychosomatic disorder.
Quote: (TMS), a painful psychosomatic disorder afflicting millions. The Divided Mind will deal with the full range of psychosomatic disorders, a far broader and more important subject. Psychosomatic disorders fall into two categories
1. Those disorders that are directly induced by unconscious emotions, such as the pain problems (TMS) and common gastrointestinal conditions including reflux, ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome , skin disorders, allergies and many others.
As I stated in a previous posting over the past 15 years research has been slowing moving IBS from the murky shadows of a psychological disorder (or psychosomatic illness) into the full light of physiological disorder. IBS isn't 'in our heads' it is 'in our bodies'.
Perhaps more revealing about Sarno's ignorance about IBS comes in the form of an interview he gave on the Divided Mind where says "... bowel irregularities that use to be called colitis these days are called irritable bowel syndrome ... ". Any knowledgeable individuals knows that colitis is a form of inflammatory bowel diseases not IBS and it definitely isn't a psychosomatic diseases.
It is difficult to finish reading a book that purports to have insight into IBS when the author does not demonstrate a grasp of the basics of the disorder. He may be a wizard when it comes to back, neck and limb pain but he appears to lack basic knowledge about GI disorders.
Sorry - I prefer to spend my time reading material written by medical professionals who study and treat IBS on a daily basis than to try and finish reading a book written by an author who appears to have has little more than a speculative understanding of the disorder that he tries to label as psychosomatic.
Just my humble opinion.
-------------------- STABLE: ♂, IBS-D 50+ years - Science of IBS
Posts
Re: Renee
