[The significance of digestive troubles of children in a psychosomatic perspective (author's transl)]. / Signification des troubles digestifs de l'enfant dans une perspective psychosomatique

The description of digestive pathology in the child, seen through the psychosomatic angle, shows how this appears to be different from that in the adult. Aside from the rare cases in the scholar period, then later in the adolescent period, this pathology does not shed any light on the morbid entity clearly defined insofar as etiopathology. However, there are a series of alimentary and digestive symptoms. The value of these symptoms must always be understood through double optics of affective characteristics relative to the child of a given age and the characteristics of the personality of the parents, particularly the mother in the case of a very young child. The notion of a somatic basis favoring the trouble in the child appears indissociable from the psychosomatic concept. It is probably this fundamental factor which is of determining value and almost exclusively in the early onset of an ulcer in the child less than two years of age. The gastroenterologist should pay special attention to the affective development of the child; he can hardly predict the evolution towards a psychosomatic pathology insofar as the physiology as well as psychology are labile and plastic and that their alterations are a function of the different variables proper to the child and related to the conditions of the entourage which direct impact and interference are difficult to predict.