Just as the word “cardiac” designates a type of disease, and the word “cardiology”, on the other hand, the science and technique that studies and treats it, the term “psychosomatology” refers to the science that deals with the medical pathology, of living organisms and their interrelationships, from a psychosomatic conception that constitutes, at the same time, a way of conceiving psychoanalysis.

The present volume achieves, in a certain way, the characteristics of a textbook that, without claiming to be scholarly or exhaustive, exposes, with solvency and clarity, the foundations of psychosomatology. Written with the purpose of avoiding the aridity that the “abstract” intellect usually incurs, that intention is announced in its main title, in handwritten letter: Yes, but not that way.

The phrase alludes to the “yes, but not like that” with which a famous German doctor, Viktor von Weizsaecker, proposed to replace the attitude of “away with it”, which denotes the behavior of “fighting” the disease from a medical technique that, Too often, it is seen as something that does not belong to the life of the patient. It is, furthermore, a phrase that admirably summarizes, in very few words, where psychosomatology is heading.