Self, Immunity, and Meaning

Psychoneuroimmunology is a relatively recent interdisciplinary scientific endeavour that seeks to explore and understand the relationships between the psychosocial domain of thoughts, feelings, perceptions and behaviours on the one hand and nervous system and immune system activity on the other. While noteworthy advances have been achieved in delineating the extensive cellular and molecular connections between immune and nervous systems, explanations of psychoimmune relationships are almost exclusively couched in terms of a traditional view of immunity as selfnonself discrimination and defence against pathogenic invasion. Arguments are presented for a more self-organising view of the immune system and the insights to be gained from application of secondorder cybernetic approaches to this field.