PolifoniaCorpo

A Primary Care Psychologist together with the Family Physician: the experience of the Health Psychology School of Rome

/in , /by

Abstract

It is known that at least 50% of the requests that people make to family physicians, behind the proposal of a somatic symptom, express relational/existential distress, often in very early phases, in which the intervention could be short and easy: the doctor, however,  is not always in the position to offer an answer, and therefore ends up carrying out analyses and administering drugs whose uselessness he is the first to recognize. A response by referral to a psychologist appears problematic given the difficulty in identifying both the patients to be referred and the appropriate referring methods. Anyhow, the acceptance of the referral by the patient appears unlikely, since contact with a psychologist is still burdened by strong social stigma. Read more

PolifoniaCorpo

A Premise

/in , /by

What makes us human: the “Mind” or the “Body”? (1)

I put Mind and Body in quotes because for some time I no longer believe in the existence of such things, at least in the terms in which they have been defined in the tradition of Western thought (Cartesian, so to speak), that is, a mind independent of matter (res cogitans) and an inert matter body (res extensa). I rather believe in the existence of a unitary organism (Spinoza, 1677; Lorenz, 1983; Crick, 1994; De Toffoli, 1991, 2001; Matthis, 2000) and that the terms “mental” and “bodily” can refer to sets of different observations, which depend on the vertex in which the observer is placed. I also believe that we can maintain (Solano, 2013, Chap.1-2) a distinction between symbolic systems (distinct feelings, conscious cognitive processes, verbal or iconic representations, sequential functioning, explicit/episodic memory) and non-symbolic systems (primitive emotions, unconscious cognitive processes, parallel functi Read more