Explaining medically unexplained symptoms: toward a multidimensional, theory-based approach to somatization

In spite of the apparent clinical importance of somatization, the concept does not have a single meaning. The focus of the present article is therefore not on scrutinizing existing diagnostic categories but rather on the different dimensions that relate to somatization and on the relevance of psychological models such as social learning theory, stress coping, illness cognition, and self-regulation models for explaining more carefully the predisposing, precipitating, and perpetuating factors of (different types of) somatization. This combined approach could lead to the definition of more homogeneous and, therefore, clinically more meaningful subgroups of somatization.