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This chapter does not deal with psychophysiological disorders. I am nevertheless gratified by this volume's contents and its implicit acknowledgment that the relationship between psychological and physiological factors is fundamental to an analysis of the phenomenology and treatment of disease, not just certain diseases that the layman and, too frequently, the professional have come to label as "psychosomatic." As a result of the psychosomatic research of today, it is becoming clear that there is probably no major organ system or homeostatic defense mechanism that is subject to the impact of an interaction between psychological and physiological events. However, to paraphrase further the stated rationale for this volume, the complexity of the mechanisms underlying this interaction are, for the most part, undefined or imperfectly understood. It is these latter issues that I will address, even if I can provide no clarification. On the contrary, I wish to further increase the breadth of the approach to an understanding of psychophysiologic relationships by discussing a new field which has, for the most part, remained undefined and is poorly understood—namely, the interreladonship between behavioral and immune processes. In contrast to the commonly held notion—or at least the belief, in the common approaches to immunologic research—that the immune system is an autonomous defense system, I submit that, like any other physiologic system functioning in the interests of homeostasis, the immune system is sensitive to the influence of central nervous system processes. As such, the immune system can stand as a potential mediator of psychophysiological disorders.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-011-7289-9_6

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