The History and Background of Health Psychology

Health psychology, the most modern major domain of psychology, flows from ancient intellectual well-springs. From the biblical proverb which taught that “A merry heart does good like a medicine” (Proverbs 17:22) to the definitional “heart-ache” of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (act 3, scene 1), the psyche and the soma have long been sensed to be linked. Benjamin Franklin, who uncovered many secrets to a long, successful life, warned against associating with hostile, choleric people; he then developed a self-reinforcing habit chart to discourage himself from drunkenness and gluttony (Franklin, 1794/ 1906). Yet although such notions of close ties between health and thoughts, feelings, and behaviors date back thousands of years, the scientific discipline of health psychology did not take shape until the 1970s. This emergence was a full century after the beginnings of psychology in the 1870s, and well after the establishment of experimental psychology, social psychology, developmental psychology, physiological psychology, personality psychology, and clinical psychology.