Die psychosomatische Medizin bei Abū Zaid al-Balḫī

Anger, fear, sadness, sorrow or delusion are forms of expression of the soul. Yet does the body remain unaffected by this? How does the soul respond when the body feels pain? Is a strict distinction between physical and psychological processes possible? Who should have the responsibility for treating psychopathological processes – philosophers or perhaps better physicians? At the close of the 9th century, the Arab polymath Abū Zaid al-Balẖī devoted himself to these questions in his manuscript entitled Maṣāliḥ al-abdān wa-l-anfus (Sustenance for the Body and Soul). The present book is a new edition of the first version published as a doctoral dissertation in 1990. In a new preface, author Zahide Özkan-Rashed draws attention to new developments in psychosomatic medicine. A brief review of historical aspects is followed by the main section, which carries out a comparative analysis of the text. Özkan-Rashed shows how Abū Zaid al-Balẖī uses psychopathological phenomena to illustrate the interaction between body and soul; the treatise is striking for the differentiated and systematic manner in which it proceeds. It also becomes clear that the scholar assigns special importance to prevention and therapy. This section closes with a brief presentation of how the topic was addressed by contemporaries of al-Balẖī such as Ibn Sīna, Maimonides and other scholars. In the third section the author presents a German translation of the second part of the manuscript. “Psychosomatic Medicine in the work of Abū Zaid al-Balẖī,” reveals astonishing parallels to the present day and in many ways is still valid today. Al-Balẖī’s “holistic” thinking regarding the body and soul was far ahead of his time and deserves the attention of modern science.