The Oxford Handbook of Psychoneuroimmunology

The present volume demonstrates how advances in psychological science can contribute to advancing knowledge in psychoneuroimmunology. The traditional focus on stress can be seen in several chapters, but this focus is also modernized in chapters dealing with specific stressful conditions, emotional reactions, and individual differences. The chapters also reveal an expansion of the levels of analysis from molecules to societies. The importance of the immune system for health at the beginning and end of life is reflected in chapters examining psychoneuroimmunological effects from pregnancy through infancy and in the latter decades of life. The chapters in this volume illustrate the best of PNI: cutting-edge models of how the outer and inner worlds interact with each other, and the complexity of both of those worlds.