PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY AND MEDICINE

ABSTRACTPsychophysiology is just as closely related to internal medicine as it is to psychiatry. “Psychological variable” has two distinct meanings: a) an external sensory stimulus, or b) an organismic state described in psychological language. “Psychological” and “Physical” are names of two different languages. There is no such thing as a non‐physical illness. Asking whether emotions cause diseases, or diseases cause emotions, leads to many difficulties and is unprofitable. It is far more useful to ask about stimulus‐response relationships. There are more kinds of specificity relations in psychophysiology and psychosomatic medicine than are usually recognized, and the usual specificity statements in psychosomatic medicine are not concerned with I‐R or S‐R specificity. There are many problems in medicine which psychophysiology could help to solve.