The conversion disorder yesterday and today: theoretical and clinical evolutions of a psychoanalytic "symbol".

The author describes the theoretical-clinical evolutions of conversion disorders, taking them as a "symbol" of a wider discourse that indirectly illuminates the profound changes that have occurred in recent years in the development of our discipline. Starting from Freud's first formulations, which are configured as the first serious attempt to explain "the mysterious leap from mental to physical", the author then tackles the problem of the nosographic framing in the psychoanalytic and psychiatric field of the "conversive" process with the relative areas of terminological confusion that still accompany the use of terms such as conversion, somatization and psychosomatic disorders. The historical excursus ends with a look at how to conceptualize conversion disorders in the current psychoanalytical horizons, with particular attention to the multiple code theory and the profound implications of the model proposed by Bucci. Finally, the "enigmatic" and "dense" nature of the topic addressed offers the opportunity for a more general reflection on the changes that have occurred in recent decades in the very way of approaching the ancient and controversial mind-body problem, and in particular on the current tendency to overcome the old dichotomy and to consider it, starting from a systemic observation vertex, in a unitary perspective of mutual circular influence.