Hypochondria: Woeful Imaginings

by Susan Baur

Book Overview

Writing with grace, humor, and an expert's eye for revealing detail, Susan Baur illuminates the processes by which hypochondriacs come to adopt and maintain illness as a way of life.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520061071
• ISBN13: 9780520061071
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 252 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.

Customer Reviews

healing power of history & literature

A graceful, lovely little book - I am delighted to be offered Miguel de Unamuno and Hannah Arendt for self-help! (And I wish more popular psychology books had bibliographies like hers!)

A partial etiology of hypochondria

Baur, a psychologist,efficiently examines the 'woeful imaginings' of the hypochondriac -- from mostly historical perspectives. A chapter on world-class hypochondriac James Boswell, biographer of Samuel Johnson, is a highlight, as is a chapter on European treatments and philosophies of this malady. Imagined illness' role in childhood, among the elderly, in other cultures; its function in relationships -- all discussed. The historic stuff is great. The book falters on the contemporary problems of hypochondria. Baur's clinical approach seems sensible and pragmatic, and I would suspect that it doesn't work.Can hypochondriacs really 'unlearn' it? I wish she had dug a little deeper in her final chapter, "Getting Better." Definitely worth reading.