[Can psychosomatic concepts make a contribution in surgery?].

All medical reasoning and action is based on a medical theory. Johannes Müller, the renowned 19th century physiologist, stated: "What we experience with our senses is not a mirror of objects characteristics, but rather depends on the living organism's interpretation of sense-receptor stimulation." A mechanistic model of medicine which does not reflect on and include individual reality and the influence of personality and personal history subjects patients to the danger of surgery; psychosomatic concepts reduce this danger. If the surgeon integrates (not adds!) the psychological and social dimensions in his theory of medicine, then the question of what psychosomatic concepts can contribute to surgery is answered: A patient with atypical facial pain due to a conversion reaction will not be operated. Patients will be dismissed and return home earlier after hip-joint operations. Persons with a strong body fixation and pain masking their fantasies of invulnerability (narcissistic block) will not be subjected surgery. Women with abdominal pain connected with childhood sexual abuse will not be submitted to operations in the genital area etc.