Las alergias, artículo en inglés

Hello to everyb@dy:

Today I'd like to speak to you about allergies. We all have suffered them some time in our life, in greater or lesser degree, with more or less intensity. Normally, we identify allergies for some substances that cause allergies, and so it could be, but it is not the whole explanation. Of course we recognize "external bodies", so to speak, that there are outside the world, causing allergies when they get into our body. If it is so, in my opinion, the medical science (the allergist) is responsible of identify them, study them and prescribe properly the actions or procedures with that will defend us against these strange (external) bodies.

But for us psychologists, partly also physicians, those phenomena that trigger this type of medical conditions cause disorders in side us that we are very concern in study or investigate them. That is, when those external bodies drop within us, produces a series of nervous, respiratory and eruptive phenomena that could cause illness or disease, as for example the well-known fevers of Hay, already known since medieval times. With respect to eruptive manifestations that many people could suffer, another example, could appoint allergies in contact to wool. Therefore is a health issue problem to keep in mind, and as we have said, from the medical and psychological point of view.

Although, these substances are not considered as dangerous as other substances that Psychiatry textbooks can prevent us, such as: alcohol, amphetamines, cannabis, cocaine, inhalant, anabolic, sedative, hypnotic, or anxiolytic, etc.   these type of substances  are illegal substances that cause physical and psychological problems with a very strong impact on our social structure, in a educational or occupational level. But allergenic substances, which are considered safe-type substances, generate a psycho-physiological immune type reaction that may cause a peculiar disorder inside us, but in a way that those foreign body or "invaders" are considered to be clinically normal. To name more reactions to these allergens that will permit us to carry on closer to the psychological aspects of this phenomenon, we will name allergic reaction such as conjunctivitis, rhinitis, dermatitis, urticarial, food allergy, allergy medications, allergy to insect bites, or asthma, this last one a very important case in point for us to keep in mind.

Because asthma's described as a syndrome that is activated on the occasion of certain allergic attacks in which the role of the physician is to provide an immune treatment (perhaps, with the help of auto-antigens microbial injection), but without devaluing the role of psychological factors, which are the ability of adults and children to symbolize or fantasizing figurative or imaginary representations of these allergens, and this may so by the fact of being able to imaging or having a mind to think our health problems, and that is the psychological impact that we do have that affect also our body with many kind of emotions and representations of fear or doubtless. In psychotherapy, there are treatments for a specific desensibilization or for many allergens that try to reduce the crisis either in the presence or not of the allergen. The asthmatic treated with had success in psychotherapy did not develop the asthmatic crisis still retains its constitutional sensitivity. 

With children, for example, we had found psychological studies that have considered these psychological factors that trigger allergic reactions, like:

• The characteristic of the personality of the child

• Psychic disorders in parents (hyper protect attitude toward the child, father husband dominated by his wife, parents excessively ambitioned from the intellectual point of view, overly authoritarian parents etc.) 

Having that considered, both in adults as in children, we will add another factor that may trigger allergic reactions, such us the psycho-social stress. For example, at school they are social events that not only are learning experiences, and it is increasenly growing as time passes in our modern society such us: the harassment in school, the bullying in and out de clasroom, the conjugal conflicts (such us the divorce), and to list other aspects less obvious but notorious present, as are:

• State of anxiety or apprehension  
• Lack of confidence
• Dependency of their parents
• Elevated appraisal or sensitivity in their human relationships
• Children type anxious and dependent

In conclusion, and evoking my notes of college,  I have been teach in modern biology field the idea predominated of that the “function born first starting in existence of organ determination”, referring to those patients that suffer of somatic visceral illness. Authors such as Darwin, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire believed in this principle and until today this idea has not been denied. In my opinion, as well as of others many psychosomathologist (Pierre Marty, Christophe Dejours, etc.) that set their attention in the functional, observed that the function (meaning psychological performing) can relieve our internal organs of their main performances in body building (eyes, heart, liver, skin, etc.) and turn them to psychological propose.  Another example, in the case of a diabetic patient, a doctor controls the diabetes of his patient with insulin injections, and thus relieving the sick body of it suffering (¡and that is already a big step!), but while the problem of the diabetic is not resolved with insulin, the illness still on stage. So diabetic´s patient are at a halt suffering mentally their controlled body complaint. And of course, handle pharmacopeia does not mean we come into the field of psychopathology treatment, or at least the psychological processes involved in this disease or any other ailment that today we have tried to discus in our topic of allergy infection.

Saying it another way, and concluding, we believe that man is a combination, a blending of its components between his body and his soul, or his psyche. The concepts of monism, dualism and synthetic vision were developed from traditional philosophy. The first reduces all our existence on the bases of its pure matter or its pure spirituality. The second philosophical term, dualism, distinguishes and separates the material matter (the body) of its spiritual (mental) live. Finally, the synthetic vision framed in onto a unit, both constituent and dynamic, body and mind as one. In my opinion, the monism is a perspective often reductionist and unilateral, conducting their research in a sectarian manner that beset the problems of human being. However, we understand that its development in modern times has gone on successfully in the same time as scientific investigational or experimentation, i.e.: applied experimental sciences.

Though I suggest to pick up where we left off the interdisciplinary dialogue from not experimental sciences to formal sciences towards an unitary idea of human being. We should integrate our physical properties, our biological constitution of our sensory organs and cognition into our rational faculties or thinking activities, despite of their conciseness or unconscious level of function.

David Norberto Gascón Razé. 
Psicólogo en Madrid  
Tel: 636 55 45 62 
Email: dnd.gascon@cop.esWebsite: http://www.psicologaenmadridarganzuela.com