What is the difference between psychosomatic and somatization?

Answer 1

To somatize is to take stress and basically turn it into or express it in somatic ways. A child with separation anxiety may somatize the anxiety and express it as a stomach ache. In somatization, the stomach ache is real, but a major cause of the stomach ache is anxiety. The term "somatization" is associated with a specific disorder, which involves the occurrence of multiple physical complaints over a period of time which are believed to have more of a basis in mental health rather than in an actual physical disorder (See the Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders for more detail on that). The term psychosomatic is a more general term for the study of medical issues in which psychological factors play a major role. Psychosomatic medicine would include the study and treatment of, for instance, Heart disease and Diabetes in which psychological factors play an important role, but also other somatoform disorders (of which somatization disorder is one). such as In conversion blindness (also a somatoform disorder), the sufferer cannot see even though the brain and eye function normally. It is believed that because of psychological factors, the sufferer's exprience is that they cannot see. They are not believed to be 'faking" blindness (that would be termed "malingering if the purpose was for some sort of secondary gain like money, and it would be called "factitious disorder" if the purpose was to for primary gain like being in the sick role and receiving sympathy). In conversion blindess the sufferer really experiences themselves as blind despite the fact that the cause is psychological rather than physiological. The psychoanalytic explanation for this would be that there was something in the person's environment that they desperately do not want to see, and "blindness" is the unconscious mind's solution to the problem. In the psychosomatic study of heart disease, however, there is more of a focus on the impact of stress, anxiety, and anger on the heart and its functioning. In psychoneuroimmunology, there is a focus on the ability of certain personality traits and ways of managing stress to impact overall health and resistance to disease.

Answer 2

Psychosomatic refers to physical symptoms that are caused or exacerbated by psychological factors, such as stress or emotional distress. Somatization refers to the tendency to experience and communicate physical symptoms that have no apparent medical explanation, often as a way of expressing psychological distress. In essence, psychosomatic symptoms have a known psychological cause, whereas somatization involves physical symptoms without a clear medical explanation.