This paper examines some of the characteristics and aims of the process of medical diagnosis and the problems posed by the seeming opposition between disease-centered and person-centered diagnosis. The latter was one of the basic tenets of the psychosomatic approach from its inception. Its...

'Theoretical pathology' is defined as the conceptual foundation of medicine. Research in this area is concerned with the analysis of explicit and implicit patterns of thought dominating research and practice. Using the example of the stress concept, it is suggested that it is a 'key word' with...