title: Reactive-homeostasis as a cybernetic model of the silhouette effect of denial of pregnancy.
abstract: In a woman presenting a pervasive denial of pregnancy, it happens that abdominal swelling is significantly reduced if not completely absent. In such cases, the announcement of the pregnancy to the unaware woman by a physician is often sufficient to trigger the spontaneous appearance of a normal silhouette of pregnancy with abdominal prominence. The pregnancy announcement acts as an input signal applied to the regulation mechanisms of the body with the consequence that the output signal; i.e. the silhouette of the pregnant woman; turns spontaneously from an abnormal shape to a normal one. By applying a system-based analysis to these observations, the brain appears clearly to be responsible for this disorder through instructions sent to the body by the nervous system. The silhouette effect is thus shown to be a cybernetic disorder as opposed to a functional one. The existence of unexpected information-and-semantic pathways throughout the human body is also revealed by this spontaneous transition. A reactive-homeostasis model is then proposed in which symptoms result from an abnormal but coherent regulation of the functioning of the body caused by an unconscious mechanism by the brain to escape paradoxical realities. Spontaneous recovery is then a consequence of the paradoxical situation dissolution induced by the pregnancy announcement. This concept of reactive-homeostasis prompts us to investigate human disorders in complementary categories; i.e. cybernetic versus functional. Such an enlarged point of view may improve our knowledge of aetiology and suggest new perspectives for therapeutics research.
authors.affiliation: FEMTO-ST Institute, Université de Franche-Comté, UMR CNRS 6174, 25000 Besançon, France. patrick.sandoz@univ-fcomte.fr
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Sandoz
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006706:Homeostasis; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011247:Pregnancy