Abstract
Since 1978 the faculty, staff, and students of the Older Adult Program at Northwestern Medical School have been studying the etiology, symptoms, and typical course of late-onset psychiatric disorders in middle-aged, young-old, and old-old men and women. For the author, these investigations have led to a still evolving but clinically useful conception: namely, that the various functions of the psyche constitute a de facto immune system, dedicated to preserving the consistency and continuity of the Self. When the immune system is in place, the individual experiences what Erikson (1952) has called a “self-sameness,” and self-recognition in the face of flux and change; when the system fails, the result is self-fragmentation, as well as psychoses based on hectic attempts—“fevers of the soul”—to restore the lost continuity. In later life, immune systems—whether psychic or physical—tend to degrade. The late-onset disorders do not, as commonly assumed, result from the piling-up of nonspecific Stressors and insults in later life; they result from specific, meaning-laden, and potentially reversible attacks on the psychic immune system itself.
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© 1998 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Gutmann, D. (1998). The Psychoimmune System in Later Life. In: Lomranz, J. (eds) Handbook of Aging and Mental Health. The Springer Series in Adult Development and Aging. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0098-2_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0098-2_13
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