What do you think?
Rate this book
Hypochondria: Woeful Imaginings
Writing with grace, humor, and an expert's eye for revealing detail, Susan Baur illuminates the processes by which hypochondriacs come to adopt and maintain illness as a way of life.
260 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1988
About the author
Susan Baur
15 books1 followerSusan Baur is a retired psychologist who has published several books of clinical tales, including The Dinosaur Man and Confiding. More recently, she has published The Turtle Sisters book series for children. Founder of Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage, she lives and swims with turtles, and cleans ponds in the US.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
March 6, 2010
For those of us who tend to be disease phobics who fear every little ache or pain is a symptom of something dire, it’s nice to read this historic and scientific view of hypochondria and be assured that this bothersome and often frightening condition is just another response to anxiety and can be conquered.
Susan Baur takes a mostly historic and cultural look at the phenomenon of hypochondria, indicating that it goes far back into history, and that some people’s lives have been ruled and virtually ruined because of such woeful imaginings. Many well-known people or those from famous families have fallen prey to hypochondria. For example, in 1763, the young Scot James Boswell, who would become a renowned lawyer and author, traveled to Utrecht in the Netherlands to study law. As soon as he arrived, he became so fearful for his health that he could not function. It was only after he fled back to London and met the famous author Samuel Johnson, a fellow hypochondriac, that he began to talk about and understand his condition. Although hypochondria plagued Boswell on and off for the rest of his life, he managed to keep in somewhat under control (and wrote a biography of fellow sufferer Johnson). Charles Darwin’s daughter Etty, was a lifelong hypochondriac who had her entire family convinced she was an invalid, although she married, managed her household, and lived a long life. The French brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, who collaborated on novels and works of art criticism in the late 19th-century were certain their artistic expression was an outgrowth of their illnesses. Similarly, says Baur, hypochondria has been used as a synonym for excruciating sensitivity and is associated with the lives of such artists of Molière, Voltaire, Johnathan Swift and Beethoveen (184). However, Baur later quotes other experts who deny the connection between imagined illness and creativity. “Disease is the not the soil from which the best products of our culture spring,” said Walther Riese in a 1953 study on hypochondria.
Baur’s other chapters examine hypochondria in the family, among the elderly, in children, and the American and other cultures, but I believe her most significant chapter is the last one entitled “Getting Better.” She points out that hypochondria is a function of anxiety and can be managed with counseling, relaxation techniques, and in more serious cases, drug therapy (tranquilizers or anti-depressants). Most important, though, is that people who are vulnerable to such imaginings keep busy and social. “Still another ingredient of the most common self-styled cures is diversion—working hard on a career and being actively involved with other people” (188). She quotes Robert Burton, author of the 1927 The Anatomy of Melancholy: “Be not solitary, be not idle” (188).
Susan Baur takes a mostly historic and cultural look at the phenomenon of hypochondria, indicating that it goes far back into history, and that some people’s lives have been ruled and virtually ruined because of such woeful imaginings. Many well-known people or those from famous families have fallen prey to hypochondria. For example, in 1763, the young Scot James Boswell, who would become a renowned lawyer and author, traveled to Utrecht in the Netherlands to study law. As soon as he arrived, he became so fearful for his health that he could not function. It was only after he fled back to London and met the famous author Samuel Johnson, a fellow hypochondriac, that he began to talk about and understand his condition. Although hypochondria plagued Boswell on and off for the rest of his life, he managed to keep in somewhat under control (and wrote a biography of fellow sufferer Johnson). Charles Darwin’s daughter Etty, was a lifelong hypochondriac who had her entire family convinced she was an invalid, although she married, managed her household, and lived a long life. The French brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, who collaborated on novels and works of art criticism in the late 19th-century were certain their artistic expression was an outgrowth of their illnesses. Similarly, says Baur, hypochondria has been used as a synonym for excruciating sensitivity and is associated with the lives of such artists of Molière, Voltaire, Johnathan Swift and Beethoveen (184). However, Baur later quotes other experts who deny the connection between imagined illness and creativity. “Disease is the not the soil from which the best products of our culture spring,” said Walther Riese in a 1953 study on hypochondria.
Baur’s other chapters examine hypochondria in the family, among the elderly, in children, and the American and other cultures, but I believe her most significant chapter is the last one entitled “Getting Better.” She points out that hypochondria is a function of anxiety and can be managed with counseling, relaxation techniques, and in more serious cases, drug therapy (tranquilizers or anti-depressants). Most important, though, is that people who are vulnerable to such imaginings keep busy and social. “Still another ingredient of the most common self-styled cures is diversion—working hard on a career and being actively involved with other people” (188). She quotes Robert Burton, author of the 1927 The Anatomy of Melancholy: “Be not solitary, be not idle” (188).
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review