The Healing Mind: The Vital Links Between Brain and Behavior, Immunity and Disease

by Paul R. Martin

In The Healing Mind, Dr. Paul Martin, a renowned professor behavioral biology, asserts that Wolfe's words are closer to the truth than we might imagine. Long the stuff of poetry and folklore, there is increasing scientific evidence that the brain and the immune system are inextricably linked. Dr. Martin illustrates with remarkable clarity that biological and psychological links that do indeed exist between mind and body--links that have in intricately constructed by evolution over the millennia, links that, when frayed or severed, are the root cause of more problems that you might imagine.

Drawing together the latest biological and medical findings, The Healing Mind explains how we can at last reconcile many commonplace notions about "psychosomatic" illness and stress with a modern scientific understanding of how the mind and body affect each other. Martin makes impressive use of literary references to illustrate the degree to which we commonly (and accurately) observe the link between health and psyche. Here, presented in a fascinating and uniquely accessible manner, are the latest scientific solutions to some ancient puzzles concerning the relationship between brain, behavior, immunity, and disease.

Genres: Psychology, Health, Nonfiction, Brain, Science

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Paul Martin was educated at Cambridge University and at Stanford University, California, where he was Harkness Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences. He lectured and researched in behavioural biology at Cambridge University, and was a Fellow of Wolfson College, before leaving academia to pursue other interests including science writing.

Reviews

[Robin-warren Heydenberk · Rating 5 out of 5]

This classic volume reviews the early research on the relationship between how we think and our health.

[مصطفى بهاء آلدين · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mustafa

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Martin is up front that this is not a self-help book. Instead he shows that there is a relationship between mental state and physical health. The part that struck me is that one's mental state when exposed to a virus influences the chance of getting sick, and one's mental state for the time before getting sick influences how sick one gets.

Throughout the book various ways of getting sick are covered. Roughly following the Table of Contents (Not his chapter headings)
1. Examples from fiction
2. Death, disaster, voodoo, trouble, strife and sickness, and life events, the mind and the common cold
3. The perception of sickness; mind over immune matter;
4. Mind and immunity
5. Stress
6 Other people
7. Work
8. Sick at heart (Type A, B)
9. Type C
10. Encumbered with remedies
11. Mind body - dualism
12. Perhaps sickness is useful

In Chapter 11, Martin describes two philosophies: Monoism and dualism. Monoism is that there is just the body - period. Dualism says there is a body and then there is a spirit. Martin laments that dualism is still around after centuries of trying to quench it.

A few lines that caught my eye.

"Yet assessing the stressfulness of a situation is not as straightforward as it may seem. People can become more upset, both psychologically and physiologically, about apparently trivial things than they do about serious problems." (Page 121)

"A traditional panacea that does seem to work is simply getting things off your chest - or self disclosure ... Since the dawn of civilization, humans have found that unburdening their woes, anxieties, or traumas to a sympathetic listener usually makes them feel better. ... Talking to a skilled listener is, of course, the basis of most types of counseling and a central element in psychotherapy." (Page 255)

Martin makes it quite clear that there is a linkage between the mind and the body. The mind can make us get sick or sicker. The mind can also make us less succeptible to illness, and reduce the severity of illness. This truth provides an opening for lots of hucksters. (Chapter 10).

How will I behave differently because of having read this book?
Being made more aware of the tightness of the link, I will emphasize those habits that improve mental and physical health.

[Apryl2010 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating. Fantastic compilation of research on mind-body connections and healing. Explores the exciting, new links and possibilities within the field of psychoneuroimmunology, (the study of how people's thoughts and behavior impact their immune system, and therefore their health and physical well-being). Such as the connections between anger and heart disease, for example. Interesting read.

[Maggie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd like to give this book 3 and a half stars, because some parts were better than others. I particularly enjoyed the first half of this book although I found it best to read a bit at a time - too much all at once became tiresome. However the last two chapters left me uninterested, which is a shame because the rest of the book was fine.

[Deborah Carroll · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parts were mundane, and it took me a while to get into the groove of reading it. I also read a LOT of research, and much of this information was not news to me, howEVER, the last bits were very well put, and I found a compilation of written thoughts that I have also been mulling over and concluding over the years. I do recommend it :)

[Principle Based Learning]

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