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In Austria additional in-patient treatment facilities for psychosomatic patients are currently established. In this context an advisory board of the planned psychosomatic clinics suggests to develop a network for psychosomatics and psychotherapy. This suggestion focuses on four goals: further integration of specialised psychosomatic care into general medical care; further promotion of general psychosomatic care in primary health care; increasing acceptance of psychotherapy among psychosomatic patients in need of psychotherapeutic interventions; decreasing the number of chronic psychosomatic disorders by early and adequate treatment. The proposed network should involve three levels of cooperation: the primary care level, the specialised psychosomatic-psychotherapeutic level and the institutional level of planning future structural developments according to the actual needs and demands. Such a network should also facilitate a common approach regarding the admission of patients, in-patient treatment and post-treatment care. A need inventory and an implementation analysis involving all levels of cooperation as well as the patients perspective are regarded as a prerequisite for the implementation of the network.

The term psychosomatic medicine has two meanings: first it represents a specific scientific approach in medicine that encompasses methodologies from natural sciences as well as social and human sciences. Second it denotes a clinical speciality that aims at applying this complex scientific background to diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. In this review partly contrasting concepts in medicine are outlined in order to discuss current psychosomatic theories and models. This reflection based on philosophy of science shows that the heterogeneity of the concepts in medicine expresses differences in the predominance of phenomenologic, dialectic, empiric-analytic and hermeneutic methodology. In psychosomatic medicine a critical evaluation and integration of the applied methodologies is regarded as scientific prerequisite and ethical demand. These hypotheses are also shared by medical anthropology (v. Weizsäcker), theoretical pathology (Doerr and Schipperges), and by the concepts of Uexküll (Situationskreis) and Hahn (Methodenkreis); they also serve as the fundamental basis for this article.