The Healing Heart: Antidotes to Panic and Helplessness ~ Norman Cousins

Dr. Norman Cousins spoke at the Health Science Center in the late 1980s. His excellent and powerful speech on the psychological factors which affect every aspect of human physical illness convinced me to buy his book The Healing Heart: Antidotes to Panic and Helplessness.

In The Healing Heart, Cousin told of his massive heart attack and described his remarkable personal response to the challenge. Cousins wrote, “A patient’s hope, faith, love, will to live, cheerfulness, humor, creativity, playfulness, confidence, great expectations—all these, I believe, had therapeutic value.”

He strongly believes that the positive and trusting relationship between a physician and a patient plays an important role toward the patient’s recovery from any serious illness. It is apparent that a physician needs to attend to the basic nature of a patient’s emotional needs, and a patient needs to have a sense of self control – “the ability of the mind to exercise a degree of governance over autonomic functions.”

Cousins made contributions to health professionals’ notions of the patient’s role in health and disease and the partnership between a patient and a physician. This book has taught me how to be a proactive patient with conviction to heal and survive. I agree with Cousins that antidotes to panic and helplessness are well within the reach of most people.

Photo by: Dwight Bennett, Ned Davis & Martine Horrell
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