A field of medicine begun in the 1930s; Joan Brumberg describes it as the scientific study of emotion and the bodily changes that accompany different emotional states. She continues,
Psychosomatic medicine involved practitioners from many different specialty areas, not just psychiatry. Followers of the psychosomatic movement shared a common interest in a more integrated approach to etiology and therapy. Body (soma) and mind (psyche) were considered as one.
Brumberg added that anorexia nervosa was particularly suited to psychosomatic research because of the manner in which bodily changes accompanied neurotic mechanisms, but the attempt to explain it with a simple, single formula was ultimately doomed because of the complexity of the disorder. After World War II Hilde Bruch led the way to a broader and more complex view of the significance of food behavior and its relation to individuals’ lives.
