Psychosomatic trend in Internal Medicine after WWI

“ . . . by 1919 many American physicians had joined the ‘Barker line’ in Internal Medicine, that is, they had become interested in the role of emotion in the etiology and treatment of physical illness. The intensifying buzz from psychiatrists, plus experience with soldiers during World War I and with veterans in the immediate postwar period, served to underscore the role of emotional factors. The full extent of psychogenic disorder, already suspected by some before the war, was brought vividly home, and its occurrence was generalized to the entire civilian population. What happened after 1919? The simply answer is that interest in the relationship between emotions and disease markedly increased in the twenties and thirties” (T. Brown, 14). The psychosomatic turn came to fruition when psychoanalysis and “American corporate philanthropy” were added to this development in the 1930s.