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Sleep Paralysis
Price: $27.95
Subtitle: Night-mares, Nocebos, and
the Mind-Body Connection
Author:
Shelley R. Adler
Subject: Anthropology,
Medicine,
Psychology
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8135-4886-9
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8135-4885-2
Pages:
192 pages, 7 photos, 1
table
Publication Date: January 2011
Series: Studies
in Medical Anthropology
Praise:
"Combining cutting-edge science and
millennia of cultural beliefs, Dr. Adler has produced a fascinating
account of the mind-body relationship. Examining the
intersection of cultural meaning and human biology, her book is a
revelation. A must-read for anyone who has ever gone to
sleep."-Ted J. Kaptchuk, Harvard University
Description:
Sleep Paralysis
explores a distinctive form of nocturnal fright: the “night-mare,” or
incubus. In its original meaning a night-mare was the nocturnal visit
of an evil being that threatened to press the life out of its victim.
Today, it is known as sleep paralysis—a state of consciousness between
sleep and wakefulness, when you are unable to move or speak and may
experience vivid and often frightening hallucinations. Culture,
history, and biology intersect to produce this terrifying sleep
phenomenon. Although a relatively common experience across cultures, it
is rarely recognized or understood in the contemporary United States.
Shelley R. Adler’s fifteen years of field and archival research focus
on the ways in which night-mare attacks have been experienced and
interpreted throughout history and across cultures and how, in a unique
example of the effect of nocebo (placebo’s evil twin), the combination
of meaning and biology may result in sudden nocturnal death.
About the Author:
SHELLEY R. ADLER is
a professor in the department of family and community medicine and
director of education at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at
the University of California, San Francisco.
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Price: $27.95
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