Books like It's All in Your Head: True Stories of Imaginary Illness

I well knew the power of the mind over the body since I was 13 and 'gave' myself appendicitis. I had a test on Anna Karenina and hadn't read the 800 page book. I said I had a tummy ache and went to the school sick room and read all day. That night I had to go to Hebrew school and I had forgotten about a test so I said I had a tummy ache and drew a picture until my father came to pick me up and I went straight to bed to read Anna Karenina for the test next day still feigning pain.At midnight I woke in excruciating agony with tummy ache. At 4 a.m. I had an emergency appendectomy and was so ill I was in hospital for 3 weeks (and missed the Anna Karenina test and won third prize in a national art competition since my parents sent off my drawing. I got a WH Smiths gift voucher.) Fairly early on in the book, the author says that there was a test with a CAT scan. There were three elements to the test. First the sufferer of the psychosomatic illness which had intractable physical symptoms had a scan. Secondly normal students then had a brain scan. Then the students were asked to pretend to be ill with the same symptoms.You would think that the scans from the pretence and the "all in the head" patient would be identical wouldn't you? But they weren't. All three scans were different. A psychosomatic illness is quite genuine, it's not the consciousness faking it, it's the brain reacting to an issue with physical symptoms. No one would know they were doing it, it's not under their control, if it was they could stop it and wouldn't have worked their way up through many doctors and tests to seeing a consultant neurologist.Yet the doctor, nor anyone else it seems tells ME sufferers of these scans that would prove their illness is not imagined (despite the stupid eye-catching title no doubt imposed by the publisher), that they are not faking it, that just because the symptoms have a psychosomatic rather than pathological base, whether they started from a physical issue or not, their illness is very real.ME/CFS (view spoiler)[ Quote from the author: "To include ME/CFS in a book primarily concerned with the description of those suffering psychosomatic illness is foolhardy to say the least. A fierce argument has raged for decades between those who consider this to be a purely organic disorder and those who view it as psychologically driven."So she knew what she was getting into! However some of these ME sufferers are really out of order. The UK's prime researcher into ME/CFS has endured years of abuse and even death threats for his work instead of praise. His "crime"? He is a psychologist! (hide spoiler)]