[Field of tension between psychomatics and psychiatry].

As a medical topic psychosomatic medicine is able to look back on an almost 100-year-old tradition. Nevertheless, questions about its definition, area of application and by whom it should be practiced remains unsolved. This causes considerable tension with the field of psychiatry which has always seen psychosomatic medicine as a subspecialty of its own discipline. In the article, the development and current position of psychosomatic medicine in German speaking countries other than Germany (Austria, Switzerland and South Tyrol) is presented. While psychosomatic care is currently planned and also partially already executed in Austria, psychosomatic medicine in Switzerland is located with general practitioners on the one hand and consultation-liaison psychiatry on the other. After the radical psychiatric reform of the late 1970s in South Tyrol psychosomatic medicine proved to be a means to remove taboos regarding psychiatric institutions and the mentally ill.