“It has been asked, How about dominion over death? Can death be bound? Any one can die. To die is the easiest thing in the world to do. In fact, from the very moment of the mortal’s so-called birth, from the moment the lie of finity, of human limitation, is conceived, the false concept, you, as the mortal, are headed for the grave unless you stop it. You are the only one who can stop it. No one else can do so. You have to stop dying. Jesus plainly stated that, ‘If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.’”

“Angela was diagnosed two years ago with cancer of the uterus, at age forty-five. Prior to that, she had struggled with alcoholism, anorexia-bulimia, depression, and fibromyalgia. At one point she underwent intestinal bypass surgery for weight loss. She lost 150 pounds within a year but soon gained it back, since neither her stress levels nor her eating habits had changed. [...] ‘I feel like the cancer was a gift to me, because it got me out of Revenue Canada. I was an auditor for the past twelve years and I hated the job. Ever since childhood I’ve been unable to take it personally when there is confrontation and conflict. People get upset when they are audited, and they project all their hate of government and taxes onto you. And I took it on.’ [...] ‘How did the cancer get you out of there?’ ‘After the cancer diagnosis, I began coming to Hope House and talking with the counsellors here. I was encouraged to take a look at my feelings and my life. I found out I’ve been trying to fit into something that I’m not really truly meant to be in.’”

“Those who would deny the importance of psychosocial phenomena as having a causal role in producing physiological changes must try to explain how a religious Jew (or Moslem) who is unaware that he is eating pork can get violently sick hours later after being told that he has inadvertently eaten the forbidden meat. Or how can we explain the documented cases of ‘voodoo death’ studied by Walter Cannon, the eminent Harvard physiologist, and later by Curt Richter, the Johns Hopkins psychobiologist? In countries that practice voodoo, a perfectly healthy person may become emaciated and die after being told that a curse has been put on him. Not long ago the medical and scientific community ridiculed the idea that stress could affect resistance to infections and the growth of tumors. It is now, however, widely accepted that there is persuasive experimental evidence that this does occur. How stress-induced hormones can suppress the immune system is now actively being studied by investigators working in a field whose very name, ‘psychoendocrineneuroimmunology,’ expresses the need to bridge phenomena at different levels.”

“To the very large number of persons throughout the nation who are suffering from mental disorder and need psychiatric treatment must be added many more whose heart trouble, stomach trouble and even rheumatism result from upset and conflicting feelings and thoughts, it appears from discussions at the meeting of the American Society for Research in Psychosomatic Problems in New York. These people, who may make up as many as half the patients diagnosed as having heart disease or other organic disease, also need psychotherapy, as hundreds of doctors found while serving as medical officers during the war. Some idea of the size of the problem can be gained from figures reported by Brig. Gen. William C. Menninger.”

“… a man fifty-one years old, of herculean proportions, who had never known a day’s illness until one night he awoke with a feeling of being strangled. He fought for his breath, feeling that he was dying. The attack soon passed off and he thought it was due to a heavy supper the evening before. A few nights later, however, he had another attack and from then on they occurred frequently in the day as well as at night. He consulted a physician friend who diagnosed his illness as arteriosclerosis and told him that with care he might live two years longer. On the advice of his friend the patient entered a sanitarium. He became more and more dejected and felt that his death was approaching. Eventually he came to Stekel for treatment, in the course of which he discovered that the heart attacks originated in a severe emotional conflict. He had lost the woman he loved and with whom he had had a liaison for five years to his best friend. Terrific resentment was thus stimulated against a man toward whom friendship prevented its expression. For many weeks prior to the onset of his symptoms he struggled secretly with the wish to strangle his friend for this betrayal. The analytic treatment was successful and the attacks entirely ceased. Ten years later the patient was still ‘perfectly well, happily married, and at the height of his creative powers.’”