[Hysterical symptoms and the body in old age].

The psychological significance of the body changes in the course of a person's life. Using clinical cases it was examined how conversion symptoms influence these changes. Elder patients having conversion symptoms hardly perceive the aging processes of the body. Based on the assumption that the body self develops in the course of a life through internalization processes and that the body scheme is influenced and becomes more concrete through cognitive processes (e.g. experiences with illness) the body self and the body scheme become increasingly separate. The conversion with pseudoneurological symptoms is characterized by the cognitively perceived body image, the body scheme, through which normally also the aging processes become conscious. Since the conversion requires the body scheme to portray psychic conflicts the somatogenic organization function (Heuft) is repealed and as a result the aging processes of the body and therefore aging are not dealt with adequately.