The Interdisciplinary Bridge: Psychoneuroimmunology

In the last fifty years, mindbody interactions have become the subject of rigorous scientific enquiry.  There have been major advances in our understanding of mental processes, the endocrine and immune systems, as well as the methodologies used to investigate these phenomena.  Von Bertalanffy may have been right when he said that in order to make some progress relevant to psychological theory (and psychiatric practice), we have to apply “whatever fields of science—such as biology, psychology, psychiatry, cultural anthropology and comparative linguistics—can provide”.

PNI has emerged as such a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary field of research that provides an understanding of some fundamental mechanisms involved in the biopsychosocial model. It investigates the relationships between psychological processes, behaviour, psychosocial factors, the nervous, endocrine, immune systems, and disease, while also focusing on the manner in which each system affects the others, enhancing and/or inhibiting processes elsewhere in the body.George F. Solomon, in his landmark article, “Emotions, Immunity, and Dis- ease: A Speculative Theoretical Integration, coined the term psychoimmunology.

Viktor Frankl wrote in Man's Search for Meaning about his own and other inmate’s chances of survival in the inhumane and harsh conditions of Nazi concentration camps.  His theory that meaninglessness could lead to actual health changes, which he surmised was due, at least in part, to suppressed immunity, was subsequently proven by Robert Ader in 1975 through his conditioning experiments on rats using cyclophosphamide and saccharine.  Ader is acknowledged widely as the originator of the term Psychoneuroimmunology.

Early animal studies associated stress with increased susceptibility to infectious and inflammatory disease.  This led to speculation that changes in immunity might be the mechanism linking stress and morbidity in humans.  The links between brain, behaviour and the immune system have been thoroughly researched since the 1980s.