Why Do People Get Ill?: Exploring the Mind-body Connection

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Penguin Books Limited, Feb 28, 2008 - Psychology - 384 pages

'Well-argued, thought-provoking . . . will make you think twice before reaching for the painkillers' Daily Mail

Have you ever wondered why we get ill? Can our thoughts and feelings worsen or even cause conditions like heart disease, cancer or asthma? And what - if anything - can we do about it?

Why Do People Get Ill? explores the relationship between what's going on in our heads and what happens in our bodies, combining the latest research with neglected findings from medical history.

With remarkable case studies and startling new insights into why we fall ill, this intriguing book should be read by anyone who cares about their own health and that of other people.

'Fascinating . . . compelling' Observer

'An absorbing examination of the mind-body connection' Harper's Bazaar

'Illuminating, fascinating' Financial Times

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About the author (2008)

Darian Leader is a British psychoanalyst and the author of Introducing Lacan, Why do Women Write More Letters Than They Post?, Promises Lovers Make When It Gets Late, Freud's Footnotes, Stealing the Mona Lisa, Why do People Get Ill, co-written with David Corfield, The New Black, What Is Madness, Strictly Bipolar and Hands. He practises psychoanalysis in London, and he is a member of the College of Psychoanalysts and a founding member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research.

David Corfield is a researcher in the Department of Biological Cybernetics at the Max Planck Institute and has been lecturer in the history and philosophy of science at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. He is the author of Towards a Philosophy of Real Mathematics and editor of Foundations of Bayesianism.

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