Why Do People Get Ill - Hardcover

Leader, Darian; Corfield, David

3.41

123 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241143160 ISBN 13: 9780241143162

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, 2007

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Have you ever wondered why people get ill when they do? How does the mind affect the body? Why does modern medicine seem to have so little interest in the unconscious processes that can make us fall ill? And what, if anything, can we do about it? "Why Do People Get Ill?" lucidly explores the relationship between our minds and our bodies. Containing remarkable case studies, cutting-edge research and startling new insights into why we fall ill, this intriguing and thought-provoking book should be read by anyone who cares about their own health and that of other people.

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About the Author:

Darian Leader is a psychoanalyst practising in London and a member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research. He is the author of Why Do Women Write More Letters Than They Post?, Promises Lovers Make When It Gets Late, Freud's Footnotes and Stealing the Mona Lisa. David Corfield is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute and has been a lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Science at Oxford and Cambridge universities. He is the author of Towards a Philosophy of Real Mathematics.

From Publishers Weekly:

Can social isolation be bad for your health? Can stress make rheumatoid arthritis flare up? Is there a link between the amount of control a person has over his or her life and the likelihood of suffering a heart attack? British psychoanalyst Leader and biologist Corfield attempt to answer these and other questions in a sometimes stimulating but more often repetitious and outmoded study. Already, most American schools of medicine no longer hold to a single-cause theory, which Leader and Corfield go so far as to claim is more a belief system than a rational perspective. Yet drawing on case studies, the authors argue that modern medicine continues to often ignore the role of the mind-body connection as both a cause and cure for illness. Their take is from a distinctly psychoanalytical perspective and they suggest that both a holistic approach and therapy could prevent sickness and help with treatment: in a case involving an 18-year-old diabetic, they link her refusal to follow a treatment regimen to her underlying feelings about her father. According to the authors, medical practices in the U.S. could be improved greatly if doctors took the time to listen to their patients and ask questions in order to learn if psychological events might underpin physical ailments. (May)
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