The Self-Healing Personality: Why Some People Achieve Health and Others Succumb to Illness - Softcover

Dr. Howard S. Friedman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0595002897 ISBN 13: 9780595002894

Publisher: iUniverse, 2000

Synopsis

With breakthroughs in understandings of the disease prone and self-healing personalities Dr. Howard S. Friedman gives his answers to important questions. Why are certain people more likely to achieve health than other, seemingly similar, people? How can one increase their chances of preserving their health? What are the health effects of our chronic mood states? How are heart disease, cancer, arthritis, and other diseases related to personality? How can the disease-prone personality be altered?

The answers to these questions are emerging from an exciting new interdisciplinary health science, and The Self-Healing Personality is the authoritative source for understanding state-of-the-art findings that can allow you to enhance your capacity for a long and healthy life.

"A really important book! We must empower individuals to preserve their own health. This book should be read by everyone wanting an elegant, understandable explanation of the latest scientific findings." —Dr. Margaret Chesney, President, Health Psychology Division, American Psychological Association

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Within the huge and expensive U.S. health care system, the emotional factors that affect health are, in some views, not always taken seriously. Friedman, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Riverside, welcomely redresses that state of affairs. He recounts an enormous number of scientific studies that have suggested definite relationships between emotions and illness, concluding that if emotional makeup is poorly matched to lifestyle, the risk of disease is greater, and explaining the biologic reasons for such tendencies--how depression suppresses the body's immune system, for example. Using the ancient model of the four humors, the author sets forth convincing models for three unhealthy personality types: melancholic; choleric (hostile); and phlegmatic (stoic or apathetic)--and a fourth, the "self-healing" personality (sanguine, or cheerful). And though he decries trendy methods for achieving the "emotional equilibrium" of the sanguine, Friedman does believe that small, repetitive changes in daily activities and behavior can begin to build positive traits and, thus, resistance to disease.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"...should be read by everyone wanting an elegant, understandable explanation of the latest scientific findings." -- Dr. Margaret Chesney, American Psychological Association

Edition details

• Publisher: iUniverse
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0595002897
• ISBN 13: 9780595002894
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 260