[The organism in health and disease. On the path to an integrated biomedical model: sequelae of the theory of psychosomatic medicine].

Traditional Western biomedicine emphasizes changes in structure as explanations of disease, that are produced by single causes. It seeks to understand the proximate, molecular mechanisms of disease. The consequences of this line of thought are varied and many, and are not the purpose of this essay. Psychosomatic medicine research has always been more concerned with a broader and more integrated perspective in health, illness and disease. It has attempted to study and understand persons in terms of the behaviors of interacting systems - the physiology of the organism. In the past 20 years a language has evolved that speaks of the organism's functions in dynamic, time-related terms. Both phenomenologically and mathematically functions can be described in terms of rhythms which with disease undergo change. Each function has its own characteristic features (amplitude, frequency and form) it is frequency modulated. These rhythms are the product of oscillators, and/or positive and negative or mixed feedback systems. When perturbed they undergo changes in features. Many rhythms (e.g. circadian ones) are under environmental control, or are entrained by the environment and by social relationships.