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.

New & Interesting Stuff April 30, 2021

The Apparitionist by Peter Manseau

Cure by Jo Marchant

Dark Nights of the Soul by Thomas Moore

The Dawn of Innovation by Charles R. Morris

Happiness is a Choice by Frank Minirth and Paul Meier

The Healthiest Diet on the Planet by John McDougal

The Phantom Unmasked by Kevin Patrick

The Power of Fifty Bits by Bob Nease

In Pursuit of Happiness by Frank Minirth

New & Interesting Stuff April 23, 2021

The Phantom Unmasked by Kevin Patrick

The Phantom is a long-running newspaper comic strip that first appeared in the New York Journal in 1936.  He was a pulp-adventure hero who protected his jungle home while fighting piracy and crime around the world. His unique twist, at least visually, was his outfit of tights and trunks, with a domino mask to obscure his features. More than a year before the appearance of Superman, the Phantom was dressing like a superhero.

In parts of the world, people consider the Phantom to be the very first superhero. Though he persists in American newspaper pages, he has not been very popular in the U.S. in comparison to similar characters. In other part so of the world, notably Australia, Sweden and India, he is possibly the most well-known and followed comics characters. How did a middling American adventure comic become so popular overseas? Comics scholar Kevin Patrick wrote a dissertation about it, and has since turned than dissertation into his book, The Phantom Unmasked.

It started with the general popularity of newspaper comic strips in the United States. As the American market became saturated, the features syndicates that distributed comics sought to expand by marketing to foreign publishers. While they faced objections in some markets, they had the advantage of being cheap and plentiful. In addition, the American syndicates worked with local syndicates or publishers to adapt their comics to local tastes and customs. This included The Phantom.

Lee Falk, writer of the strip, conceived of a character who was likely to be popular by taking ideas from popular jungle stories and hero pulps. He noted that he took inspiration form Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes (serialize in All-Story magazine) and Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. The name of the Phantom is suggested by The Shadow, one of the most popular pulp magazines. The Phantom marked his enemies with the stamp of his skull ring, similar to the signet of The Spider, who more often left his mark on a corpse than a living foe. The skull-mark itself may have been inspired by the death’s head ring of Operator 5; though that ring was loaded with an explosive charge.

Patrick traces the spread of The Phantom from the United States to overseas markets, especially Sweden, which would become a center of oversees Phantom media production, India and his homeland of Australia. While he considers the features of the strip that make it popular in these countries, he also explores the marketing and publishing practices of the features syndicates in America and abroad to show how The Phantom was a financial as well as a popular success. The Phantom Unmasked is as much a business history as it is a comics history, though the two have always fit closely together.

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

Comic Book Nation by Bradford W. Wright

Kirby by Mark Evanier

Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones

Miss Mizzou by J. B. Winter

Mr. America by Mark Adams

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan by Rick Bowers

The Peerless Peer by Philip Jose Farmer

Why Comics? by Hilary Chute

Patrick, Kevin. The Phantom Umasked: America’s First Superhero. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2017.

The Power of Fifty Bits by Bob Nease

Our brains handle an amazing amount of information. Almost all of it happens without our conscious awareness. Our conscious mind has a narrow bandwidth of about 50 bits per second according to engineer and designer Bob Nease.

The result of this narrow bandwidth is that much of human behavior is characterized by inattention and inertia. In his book The Power of Fifty Bits, Nease suggests that we accept the limitation of our brains and design things in a way that help us make and stick to good decisions.

Nease has practice in designing such systems. As the chief scientist at Express Scripts, he and his team looked for ways to get people to use less expensive drugs and pharmacies, refill prescriptions on time and stick to treatment regimens. He calls the techniques he developed “fifty bits design.”

Because our brains have so much information to handle, they use shortcuts. These shortcuts are not always adaptive to modern life. They are still geared toward tribal life in a dangerous wilderness.

He focuses on dealing with these shortcuts. We feel a lot of pressure to fit in; we follow social norms and go along to get along. We are very averse to loss. We seek to enjoy rewards today and push off losses as long as possible. As a result, it is easy to have good plans and intentions, but hard to actually change our behavior.

Nease offers strategies to interrupt, circumvent and utilize these strong tendencies to turn people’s good intentions into actions. You can interrupt a process briefly to require a choice between options. You can ask people to commit now to actions in future situations. You can make the desirable choice the default and require action to change it. You can get attention by inserting a message where people will already be looking. You can frame choices in more compelling ways.  You can make a good choice a side benefit of doing a fun or desirable activity. In all things you can make good choices easier to implement and bad choice a little harder.

It is hard to do justice to these strategies in a few words. Nease provides examples from his own work and from the research of others. He also provides insight into which strategies are best suited to certain situations and how they can be used together to greater effect. He also considers some ethical considerations of using fifty bits design.

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

IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel

Nease, Bob. The Power of Fifty Bits: The New Science of Turning Good Intentions into Positive Results. New York: HarperCollins, 2016.

The Dawn of Innovation by Charles R. Morris

Over the course of the 19^th Century, the United States transformed from a frontier nation dependent on trade with former colonizing nations to a leading manufacturer and exporter of goods. Charles R. Morris describes how America accomplished this change in The Dawn of Innovation.

The forces that led to the development of an American system of manufacturing were practical and cultural. There were labor shortages, especially for skilled labor. Americans in every field were interested in mechanizing work to get it done with the people and skills available. Americans were also largely middle class, at least in their way of thinking. They had to have the means to cross the Atlantic, and once here wage pressure and the availability of resources quickly made many people middle class. The middle class valued improvement and economic independence. In the U.S. they were free from the limiting class structures of Europe.

The middle class were also consumers. They were interested in the goods and lifestyle associated with wealth, but at prices they could afford. And there were a lot more of them that the handful of rich people who were the consumers of traditional luxury goods. Americans wanted to produce, market and distribute goods on a mass scale that was hard for Europeans of the time to even imagine.

The cloth-making industry was one of the first to bring together the aspects of modern manufacturing: specialization, organization of work flow, mechanization and automation. American cloth makers took—sometimes stole—these things from the British. A leap that the Americans made, but not the British, was to apply these same concepts to all kinds of production.

The organization of work was especially helpful in the U.S., where the skilled workers needed for precision machine making were few. Morris uses the arms industry as an example of American leadership in the transformation from craft piecework to an organized workflow with uniform standards.

Morris also undertakes some myth busting. Eli Whitney is associated with first rifles—really the first manufactured goods—to have interchangeable parts, which is a hallmark of modern manufacturing. Whitney and others promised interchangeability to win contracts with the Army, but he never achieved it; it took him a while to even become a good gun maker. It took decades of work by others to achieve interchangeable parts. This was both a matter of organizing work and developing more precise machining equipment.

Morris shows how innovations accumulated over time to create American manufacturing leadership. He shows how the culture and natural environment were incubators for such development.

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

The Gentleman Scientists by Tom Schachtman

Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick

The Power Makers by Maury Klein

The Society for Useful Knowledge by Jonathan Lyons

Waste and Want by Susan Strasser

Morris, Charles R. The Dawn of Innovation: The First American Industrial Revolution. New York: Public Affairs, 2012.

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.

Happiness is a Choice by Frank B. Minirth and Paul D Meier

I’ve been reading a lot about anxiety and depression lately, and it has led me to some older books, such as Happiness is a Choice by psychiatrists Frank B. Minirth and Paul D. Meier. The book appears to be written for a mixed audience of therapists who may be treating patients with depression and people who may pick up the book as a self-help guide. If depression is affecting your life, I recommend you talk to your physician or reach out for appropriate counseling; there are effective therapies and in some cases drugs may be appropropriate.

The book may be broken into three major parts. The first deals with the symptoms of depression. Though it is fairly widely know now (thanks largely to drug advertising), it was probably less known in 1978 when this book was published, that there are physical symptoms to depression. Feeling bad emotionally can make us feel bad physically and vice-versa.

The second part deals with the causes of depression. These are particularly stress and trauma. We all face trauma in life, and it does not have to be “major” to result in depression. We all grieve losses, get angry over the way we or others are mistreated, face dysfunction in relationships and countless other stresses and traumas. Any of us may suffer a blow that leads to depression.

“Who gets depressed? At some period of life, nearly everyone does!” Frank B. Minirth and Paul D. Meier, Happiness is a Choice

Finally, they deal with the treatment of depression. Much of Minirth and Meier’s advice deals with thinking and relationships. Therapy may occur at a counselor’s office, but healing takes place in everyday life, thoughts and relationships.

The book also contains appendices that deal with things that may be of more interest to therapist. These include a few very brief case studies, a short chapter on the biology of depression and additional information on various types of treatment.

Minirth and Meier are known as Christian counselors who discuss faith alongside medicine. This book is no exception. The authors reference the Bible and draw lessons from it. Though many may find useful advice in this book, I think it would especially appeal to Christian who are seeking help that is consistent with their faith. Their advice on overcoming depression and anxiety is rooted in their religion.

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

Anxious for Nothing by Max Lucado

The Mindful Way through Depression by Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindal Segal & Joh Kabat-Zinn

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

The Solution by Lucinda Bassett

Think 4:8 by Tommy Newberry & Lyn Smith

12 “Christian” Beliefs That Can Drive You Crazy by Henry Cloud & John Townsend

Minirth, Frank B., and Paul D. Meier. Happiness is a Choice: A Manual on the Symptoms, Causes and Cures of Depression. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker House, 1978.

In Pursuit of Happiness by Frank Minirth

Happiness is something we can produce, at least in part, from the choices we make and the things we do. Psychiatrist Frank Minirth emphasizes the choices that lead to happiness in his book, In Pursuit of Happiness.

Minirth is particularly known for his work in Christian psychology. The book is full of references to the Bible, with scriptures selected to provide advice in several areas of life that have a strong effect no happiness. I found this to be one of the best parts of the book.

The author is also a medical doctor. As such, he also believes that some can benefit from drugs, other medical treatment and psychological counseling. He emphasizes the power of God, but he does not minimize the benefits of medicine. The main body of the book does not deal much with the medical treatment of depression, anxiety or other treatable disorders that affect happiness other to point to the potential benefits of medical treatment. However, the book includes several appendices on the biological causes and medical treatment (including drugs) of anxiety, depression, dementia and other diseases.

Most of the book is very easy to read. Each chapter plainly follows an outline and flows from subject to subject. To a great degree, readers may skip around to the chapters that are most relevant to them and still make sense of the book.

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

Anxious for Nothing by Max Lucado

The Beethoven Factor by Paul Pearsall

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

Happiness is a Choice by Barry Neil Kaufman

Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar

I Can Make You Happy by Paul McKenna

The Instinct to Heal by David Servan-Schreiber

It's Not Always Depression by Hilary Jacobs Hendel

Language and the Pursuit of Happiness by Chalmers Brothers

Lost Connections by Hari Johnson

The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People by David Niven

100 Ways to Happiness by Timothy Sharp

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

Solve for Happy by Mo Gawdat

Secrets You Keep from Yourself by Dan Neuharth

The Solution by Lucinda Bassett

Think 4:8 by Tommy Newberry & Lyn Smith

Vital Friends by Tom Rath

Minirth, Frank. In Pursuit of Happiness: Choices that Can Change Your Life. Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming H. Revell, 2004.

The Healthiest Diet on the Planet by John McDougal

I previously reviewed a couple of books on low-carb diets. Perhaps it is time for a dissenting opinion. Physician John McDowell argues for a low-fat vegan diet in The Healthiest Diet on the Planet.

The crux of the argument is the inversion of that made by some made by low-carb advocates, especially those who promote nearly carnivorous paleo diets. McDougall proposes that the primary diet of our ancient ancestors was plant-based, and that especially included energy-providing starches; he even refers to his picture of the ideal diet as “starchitarian.” He points to those parts of the world where people still eat their traditional diets and have low occurrence of obesity and associated diseases. They eat a lot of whole grains or potatoes along with vegetables and fruit; they eat little meat. It makes sense to me that this would be a natural diet for humans. In much of the world, foods from plants would have been much more widely available most of the year with much less effort and danger. Meat was probably a great calorie supplement to an otherwise lean diet, but it would not have been a reliable source of food for every meal, nor is it amenable to storage or preservation.

Another appealing aspect of the McDougall plan is it simplicity. In The Healthiest Diet on the Planet, he offers a green-yellow-red light approach to what to eat, what to eat with caution and what to avoid. The diet consists mainly of starchy foods: whole grains, potatoes, sweet potatoes and beans. It also includes vegetables and some fruit. Some foods, such as nuts, avocadoes and fruit juices, can be eaten in small amounts; they are a concern because they include a lot of fat or sugar. Finally, avoid animal products (meat, eggs and dairy) and extracted vegetable oils. McDougall admits that it is unusual of natural human diets to be completely devoid of meat, so I suspect it would be okay for someone to eat meat once in a while.

I haven’t tried it any more than I have tried a low-carb diet. It certainly seems easier. It is also likely to be less expensive.

Like many diet books, this one includes recipes. Coauthor Mary McDougal contributed the recipes.

McDougal, John, and Mary McDougal. The Healthiest Diet on the Planet: Why the Foods You Love—Pizza, Pancakes, Potatoes, Pasta, and More—are the Solution to Preventing Disease and Looking and Feeling Your Best. New York: HarperOne, 2016.

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.