Norman Cousins
Norman Cousins (* June 24, 1915 in Union City, New Jersey, † November 30, 1990 in Los Angeles ) was a prominent political editor, science journalist, author and peace activist.
Life
As a journalist, he worked at the New York Evening Post (now the New York Post ) and was subsequently employed by Current History as a book critic. In the Saturday Review, he worked for almost four decades as an editor. Later Cousins founded at the University of Los Angeles, a Department of Therapeutic Humor Research ( Gelotology ).
Services
The science journalist Cousins is an example of the positive effects of laughter. In his autobiography, The doctor in ourselves ( Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient) he describes his he invented laughter therapy, with which he cured his disease, a chronic inflammation of the spine, through laughter itself, while the look of a wide public straightened up.
Beginning of the seventies he became ill with ankylosing spondylitis. This disease was associated with severe pain and had a possible poor prognosis. In his autobiographical disease report him to give doctors a chance of survival of 1:500. He knew reports from scientific journals in which the baleful influence of negative emotional states was described on the endocrine system of humans. So he tried the reverse: He tried systematically to bring himself to laugh, by letting himself show funny movies or read funny books. Here Cousins soon realized that his pain largely subsided after he had laughed for about ten minutes intense. Moreover, he could then sleep at least two hours without any problems. This subjective experience was soon confirmed by specific tests to determine the degree of inflammation in the spine. Because there was a significant decrease in sedimentation rate after each laugh cure.
Today's Gelotologen ( laughter researchers ) have now found an explanation for it: When laughter are certain the body's hormones, the catecholamines adrenaline and noradrenaline, secreted into the bloodstream. A Therapeutic Humor can induce an effective anti-inflammatory effects.
The incredible story sparked a veritable wave of research and led to the emergence of a new science, the Laughter Research ( Gelotology ), which deals with the origin and the effect of laughter on the body and mind.
Politically, Cousins a tireless advocate of the liberal attitude. He was involved in the nuclear disarmament and world peace.
Awards
Publications
- Literature by and about Norman Cousins in the catalog that German national library
- Anatomy of an Illness As Perceived by the Patient. Norton & Company, New York 1979 German edition: The doctor in ourselves, the story of an amazing healing - against all the dire predictions. From the American translated by Klaus and Sylvia M. Schomburg Schomburg Scherff. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1984