Psychosomatics are presently undergoing a period of reorientation. Its scope is extending beyond the traditional, typically psychosomatic disorders to disease processes that are of considerable relevance to rehabilitation, offering novel explanatory models. Psychosocial influences are vital to the course of rehabilitation, too. This is discussed on the examples of coronary diseases and motor disability. Psychic factors may increase the risk of being affected by a disease, or they may be activated during the disease and rehabilitation processes (as in traumatic neurosis). In either case can maximum rehabilitation success be accomplished only when these factors are taken into account. Hence, psychotherapeutic supports are indispensable components of the rehabilitation effort, with analytical therapy needing be supplemented and abbreviated by other techniques. In their institutional structures, rehabilitation facilities moreover have at their disposal a therapeutic potential that could be utilized. This would however presuppose an increased interest in psychodiagnosis - not least in view of the pressing need for prevention.