Epidemiology & Public Health

A comprehensive model of diseases is proposed both in their physical and psychic aspects - starting from Carl Gustav Jung’s pair of opposites of introversion and extroversion in 1921. It is shown that this seminal approach will be taken up by scholars such as Claus B. Bahnson in 1960s and Sydney J. Blatt from 1974. In 1990, independently of each other, George A. Bonanno and Jerome L. Singer of Yale University, and Marco Balenci of Sapienza University conceived two similar models, based on the psychophysical balance of the two opposite attitudes. After thirty years, the evolution of this approach has had important developments in the psychiatric field, while for organic diseases it has been used much less. Persistent dualism in medicine may explain this trend. Actually, this kind of model derives from a holistic view of medicine, which was advocated by Engel’s consideration of bio psychosocial factors in the 1950s and is currently receiving a new scientific impetus from the discoveries of psychoneuroimmunology and developmental psychobiology.