Psychoneuroimmunologie - eine wissenschaftliche These für ein Umdenken in der Krebstherapie?

Abstract: On the basis of the scientific findings made with the investigation of the significance of emotional factors for the development and the course of immunological diseases, already in 1964 the term "psychoimmunology" was coined. Years later, it was extended to the term "psychoneuroimmunologyÂ”', after it had been possible to trigger an immunosuppression by classic conditioning in experiments with animals. With the help of these experiments the concept of an "autonoinous" immunological system was questioned definitively.The term "psychoneuroimmunology" is based on multidisciplinary research, which deals with the interactions between the central nervous system and the immunological system.At the beginning of this century, the conditioning experiments by Pawlow showed the important role, the brain played in the case of the physiological regulation. In 1962 the role, the anterior hypothalamus played for the immunoregulation was explained by scientific experiments. In 1975 science was very interested in the conditioning experiments of Adler and Cohens, so that psychoneuroimmunology finally became an acknowledged field of research.The results of research in the field of psychoneuroimmunology have lead to a revival of the discussion in medicine and will result in a new understanding of the human body and therefore in a reorientation in medicine. During the last years, the development of medicine took two theoretically different directions: scientific rationalism and physical thinking on the one hand and transcendentalism and psychic attribution of causalities on the other. Psychosomatic medicine can be understood as an attempt to combine these directions, but it was not satisfactory, because in this case it was started again from a relation of spirit and body from a monocausal point of view.We have to ask for an "integrative medicine", which clearly points out the process character of phenomena. There is no intention to devaluate the previous reductionistic practice which made a tremendous increase in knowledge possible during the last centuries. But with research and thinking in linear connections of cause and result we can only recognize and understand partial aspects of man and his development. The investigation of complex, cross-Iinked systems will be a necessary precondition to be able to better understand dynamic processes. A scientific thinking from the point of view of cause and result is not suitable for this approach.

Keyword(s): Psychoneuroimmunologie

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