What Causes Somatoform Disorders?Th

What Causes Somatoform Disorders?
Theorists typically explain the preoccupation somatoform disorders much as they explain anxiety disorders. Behaviorists, for example, believe that the fears found in hypochondriasis and body dysmorphic disorder are acquired through classical conditioning or modeling (Marshall et al., 2007). Cognitive theorists suggest that people with the disorders are so sensitive to and threatened by bodily cues that they come to misinterpret them (Witthöft & Hiller, 2010; Williams, 2004).
In contrast, the hysterical somatoform disorders—conversion, somatization, and pain disorders—are widely considered unique and in need of special explanations. The ancient Greeks believed that only women had hysterical disorders. The uterus of a sexually ungratified woman was supposed to wander throughout her body in search of fulfillment, producing a physical symptom wherever it lodged. Thus Hippocrates suggested marriage as the most effective treatment for such disorders.
Work by Ambroise-Auguste Liébault and Hippolyte Bernheim in the late nineteenth century set the stage for today’s prevailing opinion that psychosocial factors cause hysterical disorders. These researchers founded the Nancy School in Paris for the study and treatment of mental disorders. There they were able to produce hysterical
symptoms in normal people—deafness, paralysis, blindness, and numbness—by hypnotic
suggestion, and they could remove the symptoms by the same means (see Chapter 1).