DYNAMIC PSYCHIATRY AND PSYCHOSOMATIC-MEDICINE - A VIEW OF AMMON,GUNTER CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOSOMATICS

This paper represents a hommage to Ammon's contribution to psychosomatic medicine and emphasizes central concepts published in his book >>Psychoanalysis and Psychosomatics<<. The author points out that there exists a similar scientific background reaching back to the common years at the Menninger Foundation, Kansas/USA. The author appreciates especially Ammon's understanding of psychosomatic illness as belonging to the >>archaic ego diseases<<, These cannot longer be understood from the frame of reference of the neuroses. That means, the psychosomatic illness represents an ego-deficit, its symptoms presenting an equivalent for the psychotic desintegration. The symptom formation can be seen as the patient's unconscious attempt to form an ego-demarcaton, since the symptom fills up the >>hole in the ego<< to a certain extent. The author highly values Ammon's conception of psychosomatics for obtaining adequate diagnosis and effective psychotherapeutic treatment.