Emotions and medicine

Making a Place for Emotions in Medicine

Emotions and Health: Laughter Really Is Good Medicine

That laughter could be used as a medical therapeutic intervention was highly popularized by the story of Norman Cousins, initially published as a case history in JAMA and then later as a biographical book, Anatomy of an Illness.1 Cousins, editor of the Saturday Review and one of America’s best known intellectuals, treated his own his own ankylosing spondylitis using Marx Brothers–induced laught...

What doctors feel: how emotions affect the practice of medicine.

In this book of real-life stories intermixed with the latest research, Dr. Danielle Ofri examines the often overlooked aspect of medicine—how doctors feel. By shedding light on how doctors cope with the stresses and responsibilities of patients, colleagues, lawyers, and their personal lives, she explains why it is important that patients know how emotions influence the way physicians treat thei...

Basic Emotions, Complex Emotions, Machiavellian Emotions

Abstract The current state of knowledge in psychology, cognitive neuroscience and behavioral ecology allows a fairly robust characterization of at least some, so-called ‘basic emotions’ short-lived emotional responses with homologues in other vertebrates. Philosophers, however are understandably more focused on the complex emotion episodes that figure in folk-psychological narratives about ment...

Functions of Emotions Emotions and Cognitive Processing