Sociophysiology: The Basic Science of Psychiatry?

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Steve Bathiche asked, "What is sociophysiology? What does it entail?"

Russell Gardner, M.D., of the University of Texas Medical Branch, possibly created the word in much the same type of moment that I hatched "clinical sociobiology." He's patiently used the concept for longer than I know; generally, there's some article on SPhys in ASCAP ("Across Species Comparisons and Psychopathology").

In Gardner's words:

"The medical specialty of psychiatry should possess a basic science in which pathologies are considered deviations from normal brain physiology. Historically, psychoanalytic pathogenesis was considered separately from brain physiology. It was not scientific because observations could not be refuted. Countering this, Eli Robins's legacy stemmed partly from his having been damaged by a psychoanalyst. It eschewed pathogenesis. Attempting to integrate psychiatry with medicine more generally, Robins and colleagues refocused on empiricism, although they acknowledged the brain's centrality. Here I hold that the term biology used in the context of psychiatry should broadly encompass social facets of organismal function. The term "sociophysiology' may best describe the central basic science of psychiatry because it alludes to brain functions used for the person's social realm Disruptions of such functions result in deviant behaviors and unpleasant feelings which psychiatrists diagnose and treat. Future study encompassing top-down and bottom-up research should include genome-neural-behavioral analyses." (1)

There's a lot of material and history in this paragraph. I don't know Russ sufficiently to guess the degree to which he conceives of stomachs or brains as having a fairly standard, "normal" physiology against which to assess the fundamentals of a disease or its treatment.

I suspect that mania or anxiety may reflect normal variation in physiological variables, deviations from a "normal" baseline. However, given the tremendous range of "Psychological Adaptations" that may be discovered, we will have a difficult, subtle task associating physiology with each of them. It's even arguable that we do not all have the same set of Psych Adaptations, either as a result of developmental stress or from varying genotypes. (See more detailed remarks under "Psych Adaptations.")

Thus, I don't think we can assume a homogeneous CNS physiology or anatomy for different people; we will continue to find that both vary as a result of environmental tuning as well as genetic contributions.(2) We may find that sensory input has a powerful selective role in which neural capacities are retained for development as an individual ages and that many of the phenomena listed under "Granddad" or "Familial Action Patterns" depend on the hypothetical condition of "all other things being equal."

NOTES:

1) Gardner R (1997) Sociophysiology as the basic science of psychiatry. In "Theoretical Medicine," 5, 1-22, Kluwer Academic Publishers.

2) Ernst Mayr makes a distinction between "essentialists" and the models of population biologists. Essentialists are more in the Platonic tradition of idealized forms that are distorted by nature during the process of development. Population biologists are accustomed to thinking of frequencies of patterns of traits. Psych Adaptations (as well as stomachs!) may fit more with the latter tradition.

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