Psychological issues that involve physical symptoms (e.g. somatization, tics) and that indirectly (e.g. eating disorders) or directly (e.g. non-suicidal self-injury) typically appear during adolescence. Such disorders have ascended to the forefront of the practice of mental health specialists. Nevertheless, whilst the question of the relationships between one’s immaterial mind and the concrete entity of the human body has been widely addressed in famous philosophical writings, it has been relatively marginalized by psychology, leaving conceptual and empirical gaps in the current literature.
This symposium aims to offer an update of our understanding and treatment approach of individuals with bodily-related psychological symptoms and disorders. It will focus on cutting-edge clinical and experimental data revealing that the mentalization-based model provides a relevant theoretical and empirical framework to improve our knowledge on those issues.
The first talk will propose an original understanding of psychopathologies characterized by severe body image disturbances (e.g. anorexia), based on the sensibility paid to afferent information arising from within the body that affects the cognition or behaviour of an organism. The second presentation will explore the associations between the sensibility to one’s own internal bodily signals, the mentalization of self and other’s affective states and the expression of concrete symptoms (i.e. somatic complaints) from childhood to young adulthood. The third speaker will investigate the association between the capacity to mentalize self and other’s emotional states and non-suicidal self-injury adolescents with borderline personality disorder. The fourth and fifth talks will exhibit recent advances in mentalization-based treatment of patients with, respectively, persistent somatic complaints and tics and/or Tourette syndrome.