ISPNE: A DREAM THAT HAS COME TRUE

By Francesca Brambilla
Centro di Psiconeuroendocrinologia, Milano, Italy
 
The ISPNE story begins in September 1962 at a French gynaecological endocrinology congress in Beirut, Lebanon, where Prof. Sheehan is talking about his recently presented discovery of the secretion of Releasing and Inhibiting Factors by the hypothalamus, regulating peripheral hormonal secretions. It is fascinating.  No one has ever thought about the brain as a hormonal secreting organ before, and the audience is all excited. I am suddenly struck by the idea that if the brain produces hormones, their secretory alterations might be involved, somehow, in the cause, development, and response to the treatment of mental disorders.
I search through the literature and find that very few researchers studied - even remotely - this relationship, the biggest one being Prof. Max Reiss who works at Willowbrook State School Hospital, Staten Island, New York, NY, USA. For years I try to work in this field totally alone.  Then I decide I cannot go blindly on like this, and decide I must look for help. In the summer of 1968, I visit Max Reiss.  I am granted a 30-minute appointment, but we end up talking the entire day about our research. 
Suddenly, Prof. Reiss asks if I would be interested in creating a society – the International Society of Psychoneuroendocrinology -ISPNE - in an effort to bring the apparently very few researchers involved in this field together. I have no money from my country, no help from my hospital in Milano, but since I am totally crazy, enthusiastically I accept the proposal and go back to Italy to begin my task. During the day I work an average of 12 hours, and then, at night, using my father’s 1926 typing machine, I write 476 personal letters to all the researchers around the world who have investigated and then published data on even remote connections between peripheral hormones and brain function. To each person, I mention their research and ask if they would be interested in getting together to share their ideas, projects, and experiences to, finally, create a psychoneuroendocrinological society. Most don’t even answer, but some are intrigued and seem willing to accept an invitation.
In January 1969, I again visit Max Reiss.  Donald Ford (SUNY, Downstate Medical Center, Brooklyn-New York, USA) has joined us. We are scared and excited and decide to select some of the scientists whose response to the idea of creating a society sounded positive, and invite them to Milano, Italy in September 1969 to create the ISPNE. Nineteen of them, from 18 countries all over the world, come to Milano.  Each one is enthusiastic and ready to work together, and ISPNE becomes a reality. With no money for organization, we work with all our resources, spending much overtime, obviously, with no secretaries, no help at all. But we are all excited about this new field of research which looks so promising, a totally new pathway which can brings us God knows where - maybe to a dead end, maybe to an understanding of normal or pathological brain functions, to the so long looked for biological background of mental disorders.
What has ISPNE meant to me? Hours and days of desperate, blind work, mistakes, wrong turns, year after year, sometimes to discover I had to start all over again, running to other scientists abroad to ask for comfort, criticism, and help. But how exciting it was when something began emerging and, suddenly, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. And the friendship - I should say, the complicity - in our original, very small, scared group. Scared we would make ourselves look ridiculous, as though we were spending our lives running after an empty balloon. Days after years something was coming out, something which had meaning, must have meaning, even though the interpretations of our results were often nebulous and sometimes wrong.
And then more and more people join us from every country in the world; the membership increases bit by bit from the original 19 people, going up and down and up, becoming a solid, steady group. Congresses are held, each year better than the year before. The journal, every year more and more important, becomes recognized all over the world. The awards. Some members disappear, some die, some go on, asking: What is next, what is around the corner?
What is ISPNE for me? A dream that has come true, and that will continue after my working capacity, my interest, and my life.
What has ISPNE done for me? It has given me shared projects, sometimes successful and sometimes not, sometimes recognized and sometimes not, but always worth the try.
What would I suggest to young researchers? Have dreams and fight for them.  The fight in itself, independent of the results, makes life worth living, full and happy.