Version 2.2 Structured Psychosocial Stress and Therapeutic Intervention: Toward a Realistic Biological Medicine

Using generalized ‘language of thought’ arguments appropriate to interacting cognitive modules, we explore how disease states can interact with medical treatment, including, but not limited to, drug therapy. The feedback between treatment and response creates a kind of idiotypic ‘hall of mirrors’ generating a pattern of ‘efficacy’, ‘treatment failure’, and ‘adverse reactions’ which will, from a Rate Distortion perspective, embody a distorted image of externally-imposed structured psychosocial stress. This analysis, unlike current pharmacogenetics, does not either reify ‘race’ or blame the victim by using genetic structure to place the locus-of-control within a group or individual. Rather, it suggests that a comparatively simple series of questions to identify longitudinal and cross-sectional stressors may provide more effective guidance for specification of individual medical therapy than complicated genotyping strategies of dubious meaning. These latter are likely ∗Address correspondence to R. Wallace, PISCS Inc., 549 W. 123 St., Suite 16F, New York, NY, 10027. Telephone (212) 865-4766, [email protected]. Affiliation is for identification only. This material has been submitted for publication and is protected by copyright.