Abstract
This article intends to make clear, how "Somatopsychology" keeps the understanding on personality and behavior of physically disabled children, and the education and rehabilitation for them, while examining what "Somatopsychology" is, and what problems it contains theoretically and methodologically. For this purpose, the literatures to do with "Somatopsychology" were reviewed in this study. The study has confirmed that "Somatopsychology" has some important problems to be studied further theoretically and methodologically for the understanding on the psychological problems of physical disabilities, but that it must be valued duly because of adding several standpoints to the up-to-date theories on physical disabilities. These standpoints are as follows. 1. "Somatopsychology" starts from a thought that physical disability per se is not more than a physical reality. 2. It emphasizes that, when we analyze the problems in personality and behavior of physically disabled children, the "psychological forces" (factors) affecting on them should be defined firstly, and then, we should make an if-then-always statement to explain the problems in their personality and behavior in connecting with these "psychological forces" (factors). This sort of explanation is called "contemporaneous explanation". 3. Social psychological variables belong to these "psychological forces" (factors) and are named intervening variables. Various variables can belong to them. However, how the society evaluates physical disabilities, and how physically disabled children perceive their own disabilities, seem to be most basic variables. Physical disability is a social stimulus. Therefore, "Somatopsychology" adopts "the approach from within" which makes much of cognitive aspects of the individual. 4. Considering such intervening variables, we could explain the individual differences in personality and behavior of physically disabled children.
