psychosomatic
adjective
Herbert Ratner 
Did you know?
Since the Greek word soma means "body", psychosomatic suggests the link between mind and body. Since one's mental state may have an important effect on one's physical state, research on new medicines always involves giving some patients in the experiment a placebo (fake medicine), and some who receive the sugar pills will seem to improve. You may hear someone say of someone else's symptoms, "Oh, it's probably just psychosomatic", implying that the physical pain or illness is imaginary--maybe just an attempt to get sympathy--and that the person could will it away if he or she wanted to. But this can be harsh and unfair, since, whatever the cause is, the pain is usually real.
Example Sentences
Natalie Shure, The New Republic, 1 Aug. 2022 That’s the central question that Tamar Koren, an MD-PhD candidate at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa focused on psychosomatic illness, is researching. Larry Luxner, Sun Sentinel, 28 July 2022 While some episodes seriously examined the illnesses, others advanced narratives that the conditions were actually psychosomatic. Winston Cho, The Hollywood Reporter, 12 Apr. 2022 And because one in three migraineurs are women, the disease has long been dismissed, or at least minimized, as just another psychosomatic condition of neurotic women. Jenifer Frank, courant.com, 24 Feb. 2022 Placebo effects are well-documented and real—in that people can indeed experience a certain extent of psychosomatic benefits. Beth Mole, Ars Technica, 19 Jan. 2022 The psychosomatic symptoms spread rapidly among the children: witnessing their classmates fall ill during a school assembly triggered a spread of symptoms through the 224 students honoring the sixth-graders who were graduating. Gary W. Small, STAT, 10 Dec. 2021 But the mechanism responsible for these psychosomatic reactions has always been shadowy. Quanta Magazine, 8 Nov. 2021 My subsequent studies of psychosomatic illness outbreaks show that symptom susceptibility is driven by anxieties in the community, social standing, and sensory cues, especially visual ones. Gary W. Small, STAT, 10 Dec. 2021 See More Word History
International Scientific Vocabulary
circa 1834, in the meaning defined at sense 1
Medical Definition
psychosomatic 1 of 2
adjective
Herbert Ratnerpsychosomatic
2 of 2