Social Uterus: A Developmental Concept in Family Therapy for Psychosomatic Disorders

Abstract

The article introduces a concept of social uterus as an integrative model of family development. The concept has been gradually developed by two of the authors of the article through extensive clinical work with individuals and families during the last two decades. It has shown to have clinical validity, particularly in family therapy for psychosomatic disorders and various chronic somatic diseases. In the article, we first present a short description of our perspective on psychosomatic issues. We also give some information about the broader context of psychosomatic medicine and family therapy in our country. The main part of the article focuses on the concept of social uterus in detail. With regard to process of family therapy, both promising and controversial aspects of the concept are discussed. We conclude with some ideas concerning a need for collaborative health care in the treatment of psychosomatic disorders.It has been more than 40 years since the psychiatrist Engel (1977) called for a bio-psychosocial approach in medicine. In his opinion, a narrow biomedical perspective was insufficient for both the understanding and treatment of most diseases. He argued that