ABSTRACT
The ways in which an individual’s relationships influence his or her physical and mental health across the life span have become of great interest to biological scientists and social and behavioral scientists, who are beginning to recognize their need for each other (see Krantz & McCeney, 2002). Biological scientists originally believed that the human’s internal biological systems mostly operated independently of the brain and, thus, of the mind. As a consequence, they assumed that the mechanisms underlying physical health could be understood by using a biological approach alone. In the mid-1970s, however, that assumption was challenged as a result of experimental demonstrations by biomedical researchers that the operation of the immune system in rats was significantly influenced by the rat’s memory of previous experiences—in other words, by the rat’s mind (e.g., see Straub, 2001, p. 156). Evidence soon followed that the brain and the endocrine system act together in a coordinated way to influence the immune system. For example, the release of hormones is not the exclusive province of the endocrine system—the brain, too, synthesizes and releases hormones into the bloodstream. These events generated the field of psychoneuroimmunology and shattered the belief that bodily processes operate independent of the mind.
