L'Ipocondria come patologia dell'interpretazione. Notazioni tecniche, Simona Argentieri Bondi

In the post-Freudian age, although making reference to different psychoanalytic models, most authors underline the pathogenic close relationship between hypocondria and other disorders of the mind-body area (hysteric conversion, psychosomatic illnesses). I tend to think differently, because it seems to me that the specificity of hypocondria is that it is a thought disorder. Sometimes hypocondriac anxieties stem from sensations and perceptions; but sometimes, without any sensorial pretext, they are organized in complex "theories" on the body and its functioning in illness and in health. Starting from the unconscious phantasies, the psychopathological picture always takes shape in the conscious -but above all preconscious- constuction of the meanings. I think that keeping these levels in mind can help us both in the understanding of hypocondria as well as in our clinical approach, by orienting interpretations not so much towards the contents -inexorably always the same- but rather towards the forms of thought that they convey.