The Rise and Fall of the Psychosomatic Hypothesis in Ulcerative Colitis

We review the rise, in the 1930s, and the decline, in the 1960s, of medicineʼs attention to psychosomatic considerations in ulcerative colitis. Both the rise and decline of interest in psychosomatics resulted from trends outside of the published work which directly contested the issue. In particular, the “rise” period coincided with the heyday of the psychosomatic movement and the “fall” with the autoimmune theory, the introduction of steroids, and other trends. Finally, we offer a general critique of the way the debate over the psychosomatic hypothesis was conducted.