Kaplan profiles Helen Flanders Dunbar, the American clinician and theologian who pioneered psychosomatic medicine. Dunbar’s broad education in mathematics, psychology, medicine and theology, her advocacy for integrating religion with medicine, and her role in founding the American Psychosomatic Society and editing the journal Psychosomatic Medicine are highlighted. Kaplan recounts her theories of organ-specific psychosomatic disorders, her advocacy for clergy in medicine, and her tragic later years, concluding that time may vindicate more of her ideas.
