THE FALLACY OF MOTHER'S WISDOM
A Critical Perspective on Health Psychology
by Michael S Myslobodsky (Howard University, USA)
Michael S Myslobodsky, MD, DSc, is an Israeli neuroscientist born in Vilna (Poland). He is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Tel-Aviv University and holds a professorship at the Graduate School of Howard University (Washington, DC). From 1985 to 1987 he was a visiting scientist at the US National Institute of Mental Health and since 1989 he has been a guest researcher at the same institute. He currently serves as the editor of a Kluwer Academic International series, Neurobiological Foundations of Aberrant Behaviors. Prof. Myslobodsky has written widely on experimental and clinical neurology, neuroradiology, neurophysiology and psychopharmacology of epilepsy.
Health psychology is an offer of help, an effort to understand how biological, behavioral, and social factors influence health and illness. As one of the fast-growing sub-specialties, it has now outstripped other divisions of psychology in terms of excitement in the public eye. And yet a new occupation was built on somewhat unrealistic, idealized assumptions. The title of this book was therefore chosen to emphasize the fact that an extensive critique of those assumptions is essential. This book proposes arbitrary boundaries for a discourse on health psychology. The array of subjects is based on two major themes: the foundation of health psychology and the range of disorders where psychological knowledge might benefit the sick; and the question of whether or not health psychology has a systematic and pragmatic structure so as to qualify as a profession.
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