This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Michael I. Weintraub, MD
New York Medical College Valhalla, NY Phelps Memorial Hospital North Tarrytown, NY

JAMA. 1988;259(12):1809-1810.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.

—The recent article by Dr Kellner¹ entitled "Hypochondriasis and Somatization" was extremely informative yet also contained several controversial and unwarranted conclusions. Part of the confusion about these disorders relates to terminology. The 1980 DSM-III attempted to bring order out of the chaos by describing four types of somatiform disorders: (1) hypochondriasis, (2) somatization disorder, (3) conversion disorder, and (4) psychogenic pain disorder. I do not believe that this arbitrary separation is correct, nor does it truly represent and reflect the patient population. The term hypochondriacal should be reserved for those individuals who constantly play a sick role by misinterpreting normal physiological sensations as reflecting disease. Thus, constant preoccupation with specific disease or body systems, ie, cardiac phobia and cancerophobia, is the rule. The remainder of this group with chronic complaints represent disorders of the voluntary motor and sensory nervous system (hysterical conversion reaction) or of the . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?