[From psychosomatic medicine to medical psychology: the theoretical and institutional trajectory of Julio de Mello Filho].

Abstract

Studies on the causality of pathologies and the doctor/patient relationship based on psychoanalytic formulations received two denominations in Brazil: psychosomatic medicine and medical psychology. The physician and psychoanalyst Julio de Mello Filho took a leading role in this movement after the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Danillo Perestrello was incapacitated by illness. This study investigates how the theoretical concepts of the psychosomatic movement were structured and the institutional strategies used to establish this discipline in Brazil. From an epistemological and historical point of view, the initial notion of transforming the hegemonic medical model was seen to lose force, followed by a shift in medical psychology as a field of health psychology.