Why People Get Sick: Exploring the Mind-Body Connection - Softcover

Corfield, David; Leader, Darian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1933648813 ISBN 13: 9781933648811

Publisher: Pegasus Books, 2008

Synopsis

An analysis of the role of the mind in human health presents arguments that feelings and thoughts can affect a variety of conditions, from heart disease and cancer to asthma and arthritis, in an account that draws on case studies and calls for greater awareness of the mind-body connection. Original.

About this title

About the Author

David Corfield is a researcher in the Department of Biological Cybernetics at the Max Planck Institute and has lectured in the history and philosophy of science at Cambridge and Oxford.

Reviews

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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Leader and Corfield question whether there is such a thing as psychosomatic illness and determine that there is no disease caused solely by the mind. That said, their book is still about psychosomatic illness, which they redefine to mean illness affected by the state of a person’s mind. They cite chapter and verse of study after study lending credence to the notion that the state of a person’s health, not just in illness, can be and is powered by his or her mental state. Most notably, they examine what happens when a person loses a loved one through either death, divorce, or other separation. Regardless of how a person appears to others, grief can manifestly alter not just brain chemistry but body functions as well. Where no symptoms previously existed, suddenly there can be increased heart arrhythmia as well as a number of other life-threatening ailments. A fascinating if exhausting look into mind-body communication that may leave the reader asking, Sometimes, isn’t a cigar just a cigar? --Donna Chavez

Edition details

• Publisher: Pegasus Books
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1933648813
• ISBN 13: 9781933648811
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 376