The Biology of Hope

Jerome Groopman, Dina and Raphael Recanati Chair of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School, from The New Medicine, eds. Ronald H. Blumer & Muffie Meyer

Dr. Groopman advocates that hope is central in the experience of illness and in the path to healing (98):

People often confuse hope with optimism. Hope is different. Hope is clear-eyed. It sees all the reality that you face, all the obstacles, all the problems, all the potential for failure. But through that, it sees as well a possible path to a better future. It’s not guaranteed, but it’s possible. (98)

Hope is realistic because it sees medicine for what it is; as an uncertain art.  When physicians stop cutting themselves off from their patients’ emotions, medicine becomes an art, not just science. (98-99)

Healing means that the patient is made whole again, emerging from the experience of illness having been restored as a person. (98)

There is “a biology of hope” and this has a powerful effect on the body. (99)