Positive Psychology: The Fighting Spirit

People who battle a life-changing illness is something that not everyone can imagine or understand, especially if you or someone close to you hasn’t dealt with such an illness. Even though I have watched my mother battle with cancer and eventually succumb to it, I don’t know how I would react or take it if I were the one. Nonetheless, I would try to use all my energy to think positively of life as she did because she is my greatest example of how we cannot control life, but we can control how we react.

“Positive Psychology in Cancer Care: Bad Science, Exaggerated Claims, and Unproven Medicine” is an article by James C. Coyne & Howard Tennen. “In this article, we examine four areas of positive psychology critically relevant to readers of Annals,

(1) the role of positive factors, particularly a fighting spirit” in slowing the progression of cancer and extending the life of persons diagnosed with cancer [4, 5];

(2) the effects of interventions cultivating positive psychological states on immune functioning and cancer progression and mortality;

(3) benefit finding in the face of health threats;

and (4) post-traumatic growth following serious illness and other highly threatening experiences.”

“Fighting spirit is characterized by patients optimistically viewing cancer as a challenge and having a determination to fight the cancer and not to allow it to disrupt their lives. It was first conceptualized as an attitude toward cancer, but later as a positive coping style.”

“Positive Psychology in Cancer Care: A Story Line Resistant to Evidence” is an article by James C. Coyne, Howard Tennen & Adelita V. Ranchor. “Critical discussions of the potential contributions of a positive psychology have been hampered by the sloganeering of the leaders of the movement and their labeling of the alternative as a “negative psychology” [4], and particularly within cancer care, the alternative to optimism as being pessimism. As Barbara Ehrenreich has repeatedly cautioned us,

When it comes to how we think, “negative” is not the only alternative to “positive.” As the case histories of depressives show, consistent pessimism can be just as baseless and deluded as its opposite. The alternative to both is realism—seeing the risks, having the courage to bear bad news, and being prepared for famine as well as plenty. We ought to give it a try.”

The articles mentioned above both conducted research to study the relationship between positive psychology and our immune system when battling cancer. The authors do not confirm whether this is the case, but they claim there is not enough evidence to sustain this statement. However, the authors do not deny its possibility, but they urge psychologists to study this topic based on scientific evidence rather than wishful thinking. There is an intense debate within the scientific world whether people can slow the progression of cancer and prolong their life by adopting a “fighter’s spirit”. There are enough cases where doctors think that is the case, but there isn’t enough scientific evidence to prove that.

“Individual differences, immunity, and cancer: Lessons from personality psychology” is an article by Suzanne C. Segerstrom. “Hundreds of published studies have described relationships between psychosocial stressors and the immune system. However, immunocytes are themselves insensible to psychosocial events; only the central nervous system can transduce psychosocial stressors into signals that can influence the immune system. Stressors are characterized as such and often treated as monotonic because the majority of individuals perceive them as stressful. However, there are important differences in the ways people perceive and respond to environmental events and even internally generated events (e.g., imagining giving a speech in front of hundreds of people). Individual differences in cognition, affect, and behavior, therefore, have a potentially important role in modulating the immune system. The relevance of these relationships to the onset or progression of cancer, however, is tenuous. It is possible that personality can affect cancer via the immune system. This hypothesis has not received much empirical support, but studies may have been obscured by methodological weaknesses. The purpose of this review is to suggest some methodological approaches from personality psychology that could lead to stronger tests of this hypothesis.”

The article discusses this hypothesis in detail from several angles by looking at different approaches and methods. The author first debates the controversy of the source and its methodology. It mentions how many studies have mixed cancer samples, different types, and stages of cancer, or the time frame of cancer. Also, “diverse methods, and models have not yielded converging evidence for the relationships among personality, immunity, and cancer outcomes.” Not to mention that the existence of personality is questioned as Walter Mischel, a social psychologist, challenged this that “the perception of continuity in behavior was a ‘‘cognitive construction... only very tenuously related to the phenomena that are construed’’ (Mischel, 1969, p. 1012); in essence, Mischel asserted that personality did not exist.” These statements did cause an inevitable crisis in the research of personality, as it did for this article, stated Dr. Segerstrom.

The conclusion of this article is as follows; ‘‘Enthusiasm for the hypothesis that psychological factors might have some influence on the development and progression of cancer has waxed and waned. The present position is probably best described as stagnation; there is a need to think about the design of future studies to test this hypothesis more effectively, especially since many studies have yielded negative findings.’’. Researchers in psycho-oncology may wish to draw on the lessons learned from the crisis in personality psychology to advance knowledge of the effects of personality on immunity and health.”

“The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter, and Miracles” is a book by Bruce H. Lipton. “The Biology of Belief is a groundbreaking work in the field of New Biology. Author Dr. Bruce Lipton is a former medical school professor and research scientist. His experiments, and that of other leading-edge scientists, have examined in great detail the processes by which cells receive information. The implications of this research radically change our understanding of life. It shows that genes and DNA do not control our biology; that instead DNA is controlled by signals from outside the cell, including the energetic messages emanating from our positive and negative thoughts. Dr. Lipton's profoundly hopeful synthesis of the latest and best research in cell biology and quantum physics is being hailed as a major breakthrough showing that our bodies can be changed as we retrain our thinking.”

This book has an entirely different take and findings when it comes to positive psychology. An interesting summary of Dr. Bruce’s book can be found here.

Reading this book or researching these findings will help you realize how much we are capable of changing ourselves. Unfortunately, there still isn’t enough evidence sustaining whether people can prolong their lives because of positive psychology. Nonetheless, we are capable of much more than we think, and genes do not bind us.

What do you feel? What are your thoughts on this? Please comment and share this post.