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Description of  Towards a Psychosomatic Conception of Hypochondria: The Impeded Thought

A rigorous and groundbreaking study. Martine Derzelle is the first researcher to approach hypochondria as a relational pathology. Martine Derzelle is the first researcher to approach hypochondria as a relational pathology. The author tackles a subject that has puzzled care professionals for decades: hypochondria. Martine Derzelle confronts all specialists (psychotherapists, psychiatrists, doctors, psychosomaticians) with the paradox of this pathology and the theoretical void on which the approach to those patients who express a suffering of various kinds has stood for more than a century. In the first part, the author highlights the lack of theoretical elaboration on hypochondria in the existent literature in the second part, on the basis of clinical examples, she analyzes the nature of the disease, and then offers a completely innovative theoretical elaboration. Finally, in the third part, she proposes a new and specific approach to treating this pathology at both the theoretical and clinical levels within the framework of psychoanalysis and implementing key concepts from relational psychosomatics.