physical well-being. This is in line with health psychology’s aim at challenging
traditional dualistic models. However, implicit in the interaction between the mind
and body is a definition of these two factors being separate in order to interact.
2 Dividing up the soup. Health psychology discusses variables such as beliefs,
expectations, anxiety, behaviour and health as separate facets of individuals. It then
examines how these factors interact and emphasizes the complex interrelationships
between them all (e.g. beliefs create changes in behaviour, behaviours cause changes
in health, emotions cause changes in behaviours). However, perhaps individuals
are not made up of these separate factors but are a blurred ‘soup’ of undefined and
unseparated ‘everything’. Within this soup all the factors are one as they are not
undifferentiated. Health psychology takes the soup and divides it up into different
separate factors as if these different factors exist. It then discusses how they relate to
each other. However, the discussion of how they interrelate can only occur because
health psychology has separated them up in the first place. Perhaps, psychological
theory creates separate ‘things’ in order to look at the relationship between these
‘things’. Without the original separation there would be no need for a discussion of
interaction – it would be obvious that ‘things’ were related as they would be as one!FURTHER READING
➧ Critelli, J.W. and Neumann, K.F. (1984) The placebo: conceptual analysis of a
construct in transition, American Psychologist, 39: 32–9.
This paper provides a theoretical discussion on placebos and analyses the role
of placebos in health and illness.➧ Totman, R.G. (1987) The Social Causes of Illness. London: Souvenir Press.
This book provides an interesting perspective on placebos and the inter-
relationship between beliefs, behaviours and health.326 HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY