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

Friedman, Howard S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805009760 ISBN 13: 9780805009767

Publisher: Henry Holt & Co, 1991

Synopsis

Tracing the link between personality traits and illness susceptibility, the author shows how certain diseases can be manifested and magnified by one's personality

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

About this edition

• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0805009760
• ISBN 13: 9780805009767
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 243