Helen Flanders Dunbar (1902-1959) and a holistic approach to psychosomatic problems. I. The rise and fall of a medical philosophy.

Despite Dunbar's central in the American psychosomatic movement, few successors seem to have grasped the nature and context of her work. This is partially because most histories of psychosomatic theory and research overlook the holistic, organismic point of view shared by Dunbar and other psychoanalysts of the psychobiologic persuasion. The medical-philosophical context of Dunbar's work is here reviewed.