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19 - Health Psychology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2019

By
Wade E. Pickren
Edited by
Robert J. Sternberg  and
Wade E. Pickren
Robert J. Sternberg
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Wade E. Pickren
Affiliation:
Ithaca College, New York
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Summary

Across time and place, there have been many intellectual and practical traditions regarding the relations among mind, body, and health. This chapter provides a brief overview of these rich traditions but focuses on their relevance to the emergence and subsequent development of the contemporary field of health psychology in the last third of the twentieth century in the United States. Over its relatively brief history as a field within psychology, health psychology quickly became clinically focused in the United States in order to succeed as part of biomedicine’s allied health professions, with all the attendant strengths and weaknesses that membership in such professions entail. The chapter also provides a brief account of three other contemporary expressions of health psychology – community, critical, and public health – that have made important contributions to our understanding of mind and health.

Keywords

history of health psychologyhistory of lifestyle and stressclinical health psychologyinfluences of New Thought on psychologyemotions and the body in healthcritical health psychologypublic health psychologycommunity health psychology
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of the Intellectual History of Psychology , pp. 495 - 511
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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