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

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. (Jan . )