According to the psychoanalytic explanation of psychosomatic illness, organ language is the bodily expression of an unconscious conflict as a form of symbolic communication. It is also called organ-speech, a term that Sigmund Freud uses in his 1915 essay "The Unconscious" attributing its coinage to Victor Tausk.
In 1915 Freud wrote:
In agreement with Tausk, I would here lay stress on the point that the relation to the bodily organ ... has usurped the place of the whole content of the thought. The schizophrenic speech displays a hypochondriac trait: it has become "organ-speech" [1] (German: Organsprache). [2]
Alfred Adler used the term "organ dialect" as early as 1912, when he wrote a paper of that name. He later borrowed the term "organ jargon" that had been coined by Georg Groddeck, and also synonymously employed the term organ language. [3]
According to the American Psychiatric Association,
Some believe that understanding the significance to the patient of the organ affected by the illness is essential for accurate diagnosis and treatment. For example, chronic lumbago (lower backache) with no identifiable organic cause may mean that the patient is feeling put upon, is being a martyr, or is aiming too low in life. [4]
In other words, the target organ, tissue or somatic function would be semantically related to the repressed mental content.
"Two persons may suffer from leg pains that have no basis in organic disease. One of them could say: 'I can't stand on my own two feet,' expressing a conviction that he or she must depend on the help of others to meet life's challenges, while the other could reply: 'I can't stand it!', declaring an inability to endure a particular pressure or difficult situation". One might discover that a client, experiencing heart trouble for which there is no medical explanation, is expressing heartbreak". [3] "Difficulty in swallowing may represent an unpalatable situation; an asthmatic episode may symbolize a load on the chest; itching may simbolize irritation or that 'something has gotten under the person's skin'." [5] "A chronically uncontrollable contraction of the hand into a clenched fist [...] may symbolize hostility as much as angry words do. Hysterical seizures may, in a distorted fashion, express sexuality or tantrum-like hostility and anger. [...] Blurred vision and functional blindness have been interpreted in various cases as an expression of guilt consequent on real or fancied misdeeds, a fear of the outer world and a magical attempt to do away with it, or a reaction-formation to the unconscious wish to be a voyeur. A hand paralysis may symbolize masturbation guilt or a struggle to inhibit hostility." "Difficulty in swallowing food has been interpreted by analysts as evidence of something 'unpalatable' in the person's life situation; nausea is inability to 'stomach' something unpleasant; vomiting is rejection; asthmatic difficulties symbolize the existence of a load on one's chest; pain in the shoulder or arm indicates an inhibited impulse to strike out aggressively; and neurodermatitic itching is a somatic expression of the saying, 'He gets under my skin'." [6]
Psychiatry not influenced by such psychoanalytic ideas rejects both the semantic correlation with the target organ and that the cause is an unconscious conflict. If anything, psychosomatizations are due to stress affecting a "constitutional" target organ, correlated by hereditary factors. [7] For the psychiatrist Jurgen Ruesch, these disorders represent an infantile use of body language by individuals who are unable to express themselves effectively by verbal means. [8]
Psychoanalysis is a theory developed by Sigmund Freud. It describes the human mind as an apparatus that emerged along the path of evolution and consists mainly of three interrelated parts: a set of innate needs, consciousness to satisfy those needs, and memory for storing experiences. It includes insights into the effects of traumatic education and a technique for bringing repressed content back into the consciousness, in particular the diagnostic interpretation of dreams. Overall, psychoanalysis is a method for the treatment of mental disorders.
Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in the psyche, through dialogue between patient and psychoanalyst, and the distinctive theory of mind and human agency derived from it.
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Alfred Adler was an Austrian medical doctor, psychotherapist, and founder of the school of individual psychology. His emphasis on the importance of feelings of belonging, relationships within the family, and birth order set him apart from Freud and others in their common circle. He proposed that contributing to others was how the individual feels a sense of worth and belonging in the family and society. His earlier work focused on inferiority, coining the term inferiority complex, an isolating element which he argued plays a key role in personality development. Alfred Adler considered a human being as an individual whole, and therefore he called his school of psychology "Individual Psychology".
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Psychoanalytic dream interpretation is a subdivision of dream interpretation as well as a subdivision of psychoanalysis pioneered by Sigmund Freud in the early 20th century. Psychoanalytic dream interpretation is the process of explaining the meaning of the way the unconscious thoughts and emotions are processed in the mind during sleep.
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Functional disorders are a group of recognisable medical conditions which are due to changes to the functioning of the systems of the body rather than due to a disease affecting the structure of the body.
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Ernst Simmel was a German-American neurologist and psychoanalyst.