Superimmunity by Paul Pearsall

Psychologist Paul Pearsall was an early proponent of current notions of mind-body medicine. For Pearsall, it was important to heal a person’s life even if it wasn’t possible to cure their disease. Often a disease can be the body’s way of getting a person’s attention, and letting him know a change is needed. People who make those changes can experience healing, sometimes in the form of a cure and sometime as health and happiness in the midst of disease. Pearsall described some of his ideas in Superimmunity.

In this book, Pearsall draws from Eastern medicine an organizing theme: hot and cold thinking. Hot thinkers are fast, impatient, black-or-white thinkers. They can be judgmental and prone to exaggeration, overreaction and isolation. Cold thinkers overreact to trivial things and underreact to important things. They are prone to passivity and feeling of inadequacy. They are isolated in their own way, and though often out of touch with their emotions, they often despair.

The body responds to these thinking styles. Hot reactors are always on the attack, and their immune systems attack their bodies. Heart disease is associated with hot people. Cold reactors are inactive, so their bodies may respond with excessive activity, particularly cell growth (i.e. cancer).

Pearsall does not eschew medicine. If you are facing a serious illness, the likes of heart disease or cancer, you need a lot of medical help. However, you also need to enlist the aid of your own immune system, which may be doing something counterproductive if it is very active at all. You’re immune system is closely linked to your brain, more so that was commonly thought when Pearsall was writing in the 1980s, so getting the best immune response calls for leaving hot or cold thinking for something more balanced.

“Until recently, we have behaved as if the immune system were somehow separate from us, doing its job secretly, automatically, beyond our control…. Research now tells us that our immune system functions within a supersystem of mind and body,” Paul Pearsall, Superimmunity

Superimmunity includes many tests to help you identify if you tend to be a hot or cold thinker (you can be both). From there, Pearsall offers strategies for cooling off or warming up your thinking as needed. This can mean observing your body, listening to your disease and getting in touch with your emotions in ways that can be unfamiliar to one in the throes of hot or cold reaction. This self-evaluation that reveals the underlying dysfunction, and your own exploration and imagination may uncover your path to healing.

Pearsall does not suggest that changing your thinking will always lead to a cure, though sometimes it might. Disease and mortality are part of being a human. However, you can truly live while you are alive, and in this since experience healing. Life is more than surviving, eating, drinking and breathing. It is important to live as fully as you can.

Paul Pearsall also wrote

The Beethoven Factor

The Last Self-Help Book You'll Ever Need

Toxic Success

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen

The Relaxation Response by Herbert Bnson with Miriam Z. Klipper

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Timeless Healing by Herbert Benson with Marg Stark

Pearsall, Paul. Superimmunity: Master Your Emotions & Improve Your Health. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987.

Dark Nights of the Soul by Thomas Moore

 Psychotherapist Thomas Moore, a former Catholic monk, expressed some unusual ideas about depression in his book Dark Nights of the Soul. I feel I should preface my comments with a caveat. If you have clinical depression, or think you might, please seek help from an appropriate professional in psychology, counseling or medicine. If you need medication, take it. I think you can undertake the kind exploration that Moore suggests without abandoning traditional therapies, especially if you need them to mitigate extreme symptoms that threaten your life and health.

 Moore isn’t necessarily talking about clinical depression, though he doesn’t exclude it. He finds the term depression limiting. If someone is depressed, they have a disease and there is a treatment for it. It is a matter of curing and dealing with symptoms.

As an alternative to this approach, Moore focuses on the opportunities in depression, persistent dark moods and hard times—dark nights may take any of these forms—as opportunities to mature, grow and heal the soul. Instead of rushing to get by depression and get better, sit with it, explore it and learn from it.  It could be a calling from your truest self to examine your life and become deeper, more engaged person. Instead of a curse, the dark night may turn out to be a gift.

Moore draws heavily on religion and mythology. He also discusses dreams. In the mode of Carl Jung, he sees value in symbols to illuminate what is going on in your life, as well as the value of symbolic and ritual action.

For instance, he draws a model from myth for the experience of depression. It begins with a separation or departure. One feels cut off, alone or isolated, especially from normal life. In a myth, this leaving of normal life is the beginning of an adventure. The mythic adventurer enters a new world, often and underworld, where he is challenged and gains a new perspective. These challenges help him discover who he really is. It is helpful to be able to move back and forth between the underworld and night to the upper world and day, to be able to benefit from the darkness without being consumed by it. In the end, the adventurer returns to his normal life, but it is not always easy because he is changed by his experiences in the underworld. Hopefully the lessons of his dark night well help him integrate his new life with the best of his old home.

Perspective seems to be one of the big benefits of a dark night. Everything looks different in the dark. You can reevaluate what things mean to you, the seeming trash that is truly a treasure and the seeming treasure that is truly worthless. It's a chance to clear out the clutter. It pushes you to accept that the darkness is real and part of you. Because the underworld is essentially your inner life, you can find by exploring it those places that are abandoned, ignored, neglected or run over roughshod by your outer life.

Each chapter takes on the exploration of various aspects of life that may bring about a dark night. These include love, sex, marriage, family, art, beauty, anger, disease and aging.

These journeys into darkness need not be undertaken alone. Sometimes you need professional help. The honesty and vulnerability needed to properly explore the dark parts of yourself could help you be a more open person and deepen your relationship with others. To succeed in the journey, it helps to have the attitude toward yourself of a graceful healer participating in your own life, and that attitude can make you receptive to the healing grace of others and your role as a helper of others.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Beethoven Factor by Paul Pearsall

The Last Self-Help Book You'll Ever Need by Paul Pearsall

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Moore, Thomas. Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way through Life’s Ordeals. New York: Gotham Books, 2004.

Cure by Jo Marchant

Over my lifetime, I’ve observed an increasing interest in the connection between mind and body. It is not a new concept, but it has gained ground and the Cartesian distinction between mind and body has eroded. However, how we are still learning how it works and the extent to which it is effective in the treatment of disease. Geneticist and science writer Jo Marchant explores these issues in Cure.

Marchant considers three areas in which there appears to be mind-body connections that have promise for use in medical settings. First is the placebo effect. Next, she looks at meditation, biofeedback and hypnosis. Finally, she discusses the effects of our viewpoint, especially how increase or reduce stress.

We are equipped with an internal pharmacy that can reduce or aggravate pain, and it can be triggered by something as vague as our expectations. This placebo affect can be as powerful as drugs at reducing pain and some other symptoms of disease, which can make it difficult to test the effectiveness of drugs. Some physicians are starting to change their minds about the placebo effect. Instead of seeing it as a problem that gets in the way of testing drugs, they are seeing it a potential substitute for drugs. The placebo effect has limitations; it can reduce pain and symptoms, but it does not cure the underlying disease or injury. There is also a nocebo effect, which causes pain and fatigue.

Another interesting effect discussed by Marchant is conditioning of the immune system. In some cases, we can prompt the immune system to have a conditioned response; we can train it. After taking a drug, the immune system can reproduce the response to the drug at lower doses. We can strengthen the conditioning by accompanying the drug with strong rituals; repeating the rituals can produce the response to some degree. This holds some promise for improving the effectiveness of drugs and reducing the dose needed to be effective, especially when a drug as serious side effects. I thought this was fascinating.

Our brain is more connected, and in control, of our bodily functions that we previously realized. Meditation, hypnosis and biofeedback can allow people to exercise control over operations of the body that were previously thought to be automatic or even independent of the brain. This includes pain, blood flow, stress response, heart rate variability and vagal tone.

Relationships also have a profound effect on our health. Strong social connections keep us young, and lack of relationships is harmful to our health. Our own compassion for others can reduce stress hormones and inflammation. When physicians, surgeons, nurses and other health care professionals care for their patients as people, those patients receiving the emotional support experience less pain and longer lives.

Marchant shows there is potential for a new way of doing medicine, or room to reintroduce older practices. By slowing down and showing genuine concern for patients, doctors can multiply the effect of their treatment. Teaching people to slow down and pay attention to their bodies, the people they love and the good things in their lives, we can take advantage of the healing capacities of the mind and body. Medicine can be less about dispensing drugs and more about lifestyle and relationship.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Beethoven Factor by Paul Pearsall

Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen

Descarte’s Secret Notebook by Amir D. Aczel

Ecclesiastes

The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk

I Can Make You Happy by Paul McKenna

I Can Make You Thin by Paul McKenna

Instant Self-Hypnosis by Forbes Robbins Blair

Job

The Last Self-Help Book You'll Ever Need by Paul Pearsall

Overwhelmed by Brigid Schulte

Psalms

The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson with Miriam Z. Klipper

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

The Solution by Lucinda Bassett

Solve for Happy by Mo Gawdat

Suggestible You by Erik Vance

Switch on Your Brain by Caroline Leaf

Take the Leap by Heather McCloskey Beck

Timeless Healing by Herbert Benson with Marg Stark

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

Marchant, Jo. Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind over Body. New York: Crown, 2016.

It's Not Always Depression by Hilary Jacobs Hendel

Depression and anxiety can be tough to handle and treat. Drugs may treat symptoms, but they do not cure depression and they typically do not work for long or require ever increasing doses. Talk based therapies can be helpful, but sometime it take a long time to get a helpful breakthrough.

Some forms of treatment aim to be more active. One such is accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy, or AEDP. This form of therapy is the basis of the methods described by therapist Hilary Jacobs Hendel in It’s Not Always Depression.

In a nutshell, AEDP sees maladaptive behaviors (defenses) and stressful emotions such as anxiety (inhibitory emotions) as ways to suppress potent core emotions. This can be useful to help us get along in social situations, maintain relationships and keep ourselves from being carried away by strong emotions. This is especially true when we are children and may not have the maturity or power to choose another path. However, we can become stuck in this behavior, never dealing properly with our core emotions, and our inhibitory emotions and defenses can become maladaptive, keeping us from the life and relationships we want and need.

Hendel organizes these items into an equilateral triangle setting on point. Defenses sit at the upper left corner, inhibitory emotions at the upper right, and core emotions at the bottom. Beneath the core emotions is your authentic self, which Hendel calls an openhearted state, in which one feels calm, confident and clear-headed.

Working the triangle is getting in touch with core emotions by finding how our defenses and inhibitory emotions are protecting us from them and the consequences of expressing them. Hendel draws examples from her therapy practice, but the fact that this is a book for a popular audience suggests that this is a technique that people could use on their own as well as in a more formal therapeutic setting. When we acknowledge our core emotions, name them, let ourselves feel them (they will pass) and express them in safe ways (sometimes through fantasy), they lose their potency and move on. By doing this repeatedly we learn that we can handle our emotions in ways that are safe and constructive; we have alternatives to our old defenses and inhibitory emotions and we can let them go. From here we can relax into an openhearted state.

“[W]e cannot  think our way through a core emotion; it must be experienced viscerally to be processed,” Hilary Jacobs Hendel, It’s Not Always Depression

Because defenses and inhibitory emotions protect us from core emotions, it can be difficult to know what we are feeling. Emotions are felt in the body, and Hendel describes was of slowing down to scan the body, assess our sensations and use this information to uncover our core emotions.

I’m not a therapist, but I can see the benefit of the framework. It gives someone a way to identify what they are doing and feeling. It can give one words to describe what one is experiencing and a process for exploring that experience. Its ultimate aim is to retrain the brain so one can let go of behaviors that are no longer helpful an embrace new ways of coping that allow for one to feel emotions and at the same time have the calm and clear mind to deal with situations constructively.

It is hard to do justice to these ideas in a few paragraphs. If you are looking for a way to deal with depression and anxiety, this book may be helpful. Even so, if your issues are severe, you should not abandon professional help from a physician or therapist. You may need a guide to help you through the process. There is no shame in that. We all need help when we are learning something new.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Mindful Way through Depression by Mark Williams et al

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Hendel, Hilary Jacobs. It’s Not Always Depression: Working the Change Triangle to Listen to the Body, Discover Core Emotions, and Connect to Your Authentic Self. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2018.

Happiness is a Choice by Barry Neil Kaufman

What if it is within your power to make yourself happy or unhappy? Barry Neil Kaufman is convinced you can. The theme of his book is as simple as the title, Happiness is a Choice.

To Kaufman, unhappiness is a learned response. We face many situations, some are stressful or things we would not have chosen, but our emotional response to them is largely a matter of our judgment of them. If we change our perspective, if we develop a new vision, our feelings will change, too.

The book contains many examples form Kaufman’s life and from the experiences of his clients. He and his wife have an autistic son. They look at is as a challenge to love, engage with and communicate with someone who deals with the world in a different way. One of his clients was devastated by the loss of his mother. He chose to remember all of the ways she helped him and had a positive influence on his life. His gratitude lifted his spirits.

This points to something I think is worth noting. You do not have to solve problems to be happy. Kaufman never suggests that problems will disappear or that things will always be to your liking. He is persistent in suggesting that you can find a new way to look at it so you can respond with more happiness.

Happiness, then, is more important than getting what you want. You won’t always get what you want, but you don’t have to be unhappy about it. This is the first of Kaufman’s six shortcuts to happiness.

These shortcuts are mindsets that help you focus on ways to be happy in any circumstance. I’ve already mentioned another: letting go of judgment.

All the shortcuts can be summarized in one. Decide to be happy.

Happiness isn’t necessarily ecstasy. Kaufman ties happiness to love. Happiness is loving yourself.  Loving others is being happy with them. In any situation, you can choose love and happiness.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Beethoven Factor by Paul Pearsall

The 4:8 Principle by Tommy Newberry

I Can Make You Happy by Paul McKenna

The Last Self-Help Book You'll Ever Need by Paul Pearsall

Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Solve for Happy by Mo Gawdat

Think 4:8 by Tommy Newberry & Lyn Smith

Kaufman, Barry Neil. Happiness is a Choice. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1991.

The Beethoven Factor by Paul Pearsall

Sometimes it seems like we’re all sick and crazy. This may stem from a focus on trying to find and fix what is wrong with us. Psychologist Paul Pearsall referred to this as a pathogenic focus. In his book The Beethoven Factor, he discusses the field of positive psychology, which focuses on what is right with people and what we can learn from those who are well adjusted, happy and healthy. In particular, Pearsall focuses on thriving.

Thriving is growth in the aftermath, and even in the midst of, stressful situations. The people he discusses and learns from in his book, some patients of his and many his fellow patients in a cancer ward, often suffered greatly from disease, war, poverty and other hardships. These people had there ups and downs, but they managed an emotional upward trend.

The heart of thriving is a flexible explanatory style. We’re all telling ourselves stories that interpret and evaluate our lives. People who thrive are adaptive and creative in the stories they tell themselves, which allows them to savor and find meaning in their lives even while suffering.

Thriving can be paradoxical, especially from a pathogenic outlook: someone is becoming stronger in a situation that is expected to make them weaker. Those who thrive can defy the expectations the traditional view of healthy thinking. They work on themselves, which can sometimes make them seem aloof or insensitive. They can be in denial, but they use it to give themselves a temporary escape for pain and time to think. They can be hard to like because of their intensity; when someone is getting the most out of life, they may have little patience for interruptions, naysayers and whiners. They are reflective, which can make them seem withdrawn. They can be depressed, down on themselves and loose hope as they make their journey. Thriving is a process of learning, so it can take a long time, though sometimes someone will catch on quickly.

Pearsall offers a lot of advice on how to thrive, especially in the second half of the book (the first half focuses on introducing positive psychology and defining thriving). This section focuses on four aspects of thriving: hardiness, happiness, healing and hope.

Hardiness comes from our beliefs. Hardy people have beliefs that help them commit to engaging in living, finding a sense of control—which includes knowing when to let go of control—and seeing the difficulties they face and challenges they can cope with if not overcome.

Happiness is rooted in flow. It is focus and engagement in life. Happy people push aside distractions, expectations and striving for things that don’t really bring them joy.

Healing is fundamentally learning. We all suffer to some extent in our lives, and these periods of sickness or other hardship are telling us to slow down and pay attention. Healing people learn to make sense of what happens (in their own ways),  cope with it, and find meaning in their experiences.

Hoping is what Pearsall calls “cautious optimism.” People who hope find a way to hold onto their dreams, or come up with new dreams, without expecting on depending on them. They imagine that the world, imperfect as it is, may be the best possible world, so they get on with seeking all they can enjoy in it.

Pearsall offers his readers a big dose of practical grace. If you’re really finding your own way to cope with adversity in a way the truly engages life as fully as you can, you’re on the path to thriving and it is okay that you may not be the upbeat, outgoing, positive, realistic person that your psychologists, physicians, self-help books and friends think you should be. Living is learning, especially in times of sickness and difficulty; learning is challenging, slow work that requires focus and imagination. If you’re learning, you will struggle and be worn out sometimes. You’ll also be engaged in life in a way that puts you in an uneven, but upward trend, instead of spiraling downward in despair.

Paul Pearsall also wrote

The Last Self-Help Book You'll Ever Need

Toxic Success

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson with Miriam Z. Klipper

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Solve for Happy by Mo Gawdat

Pearsall, Paul. The Beethoven Factor: The New Positive Psychology of Hardiness, Happiness, Healing, and Hope.  Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads, 2003.

450 Books Reviewed on Keenan's Book Reviews

I’ve posted reviews of 450 books on this blog. Here are links to the 50 most recent posts. Further down are links to more reviews.

First Time Reviews

As a Man Thinketh by James Allen

The Big Thing by Phyllis Korkki

Choosing Civility by P. M. Forni

Duel with the Devil by Paul Collins

Faith by Jimmy Carter

The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die by John Izzo

The Gentleman Scientists by Tom Schachtman

Get Smart! by Brian Tracy

Haggai

The Holy Bible

How Not to Be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg

How to Improve Your Memory by James D. Weinland

How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson

I Can Make You Happy by Paul McKenna

The Irresistible Introvert by Michaela Chung

The Language of God by Francis S. Collins

The Last Self-Help Book You'll Ever Need by Paul Pearsall

Learn Better by Ulrich Boser

Malachi

Major Prophets

Marvel Comics: The Untold Story by Sean Howe

Minor Prophets

Move by Rosabeth Moss Canter

My Inventions by Nikola Tesla

Nearing Home by Billy Graham

The Numerati by Stephen Baker

100 Ways to Happiness by Timothy Sharp

Overwhelmed by Brigid Schulte

Positive Words, Powerful Results by Hal Urban

The Power Makers by Maury Klein

Reposition Yourself by T. D. Jakes

Rewire Your Anxious Brain by Catherine M. Pittman & Elizabeth M. Karle

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Road to the Sea by Florence Dorsey

Shut Up & Write! by Judy Bridges

Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman

The Society for Useful Knowledge by Jonathan Lyons

Solve for Happy by Mo Gawdat

Stan Lee by Bob Batchelor

Suggestible You by Erik Vance

The Supergirls by Mike Madrid

Take the Leap by Heather McCloskey Beck

Think 4:8 by Tommy Newberry & Lyn Smith

Unfu*k Yourself by Gary John Bishop

The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida

Seduction of the Innocent by Max Allan Collins

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

You are a Badass at Making Money by Jen Sincero

Zechariah

Zepheniah

First 25 Reviews

Reviews 26-50

Reviews 51-75

Reviews 76-100

Reviews 101-150

Reviews 151-200

Reviews 201-250

Reviews 250-300

Reviews 301-350

Reviews 351-400

Choosing Civility by P. M. Forni

In a previous job, I worked in the field of industrial safety.  This is partly a matter of regulation, so there was often great concern about the rules. Though it was necessary to follow the rules, I also wanted to people to think. If they were going to be safe in reality, they needed to be aware, use their imagination, solve problems and ask for help.

I found a parallel to this in P. M. Forni’s approach to civility. As he put it in Choosing Civility, “Consideration is imagination in a moral track.”

In the early chapters Forni considers the notion of civility and how it relates to courtesy, politeness and manners. He wrote, “Being civil means being constantly aware of others and weaving restraint, respect and consideration into the fabric of this awareness. Civility is a form of goodness; it is gracious goodness.” Civility is the art of living well with others.

The second part of the book includes brief chapters on the rules of civility. In some cases, Forni prescribes some behavior, but in mostly this is an exploration of how awareness, respect and consideration of others can practiced in various ways.

I think a few of these worth highlighting. The first of Forni’s rules is to be attentive. Your attention is one of the most important and valuable things you can give to someone. Paying attention to others is the starting point of showing respect and acting in kindness.

Related to attention is listening. Careful listening is a skill. When practiced well, it can build understanding and rapport between people. It requires focus, generosity, responsiveness, restraint and cooperation.

I think Forni’s admonition to avoid complaining is especially worthy. We have legitimate concerns that we should speak up about, but often complaints are just a way to drag people into a negative outlook or some minor problem that is not theirs.

“’Nice’ is something that must be built, something that doesn’t simply happen or come to us out of the blue but instead requires work," P. M. Forni, Choosing Civility

P. M. Forni also wrote The Thinking Life.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

A Complaint Free World by Will Bowen

The Power of Nice by Linda Kaplan Thaler & Robin Koval

The Last Self-Help Book You'll Ever Need by Paul Pearsall

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Forni, P. M. Choosing Civility: The Twenty-Five Rules of Considerate Conduct. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002.