| Abstract: | Reviews the book, Psychology and Medicine: Psychobiological Dimensions by Donald Bakal (1979). Bakal believes that psychology "is rapidly becoming an integral part of modern health care delivery systems" and directs his book toward developing this interest by showing the theoretical and practical relevance of psychological concepts to major health problems. In the first section, which has the inclusive title "Medicine: Mind and Body", he describes a "paradigm shift" in medicine, away from an emphasis on the physiological and biochemical systems as basic to understanding disease toward a "psychobiological" approach to illness which focuses on the inter-relationships between the social, psychological, and physiological determinants of health and disease. He amplifies this point by discussing such matters as personality-disease relationships, psychomatic medicine, a cross-cultural variation in models of health and illness and the implications of the split brain research for states of consciousness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
