The concept of somatization has played an important role in contemporary clinical theory and practice. It is a name that was given to a process which was formerly simply referred to as 'emotional'. Unlike disease, which maintained its structure across national and geographical boundaries, somatization as illness took a shape which was determined by culture which was the vector of beliefs and expectations. In brief, somatization referred to a clinical picture where bodily symptoms were judged, in the light of a 'standard' Western medical theory, to be overly dominant, overly persistent, the subject of abnormal preoccupation or simply without an organic, 'disease', base.
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