The latest wave of belief in positive thinking dates to the 1970s, when a handful of studies suggested that positive thinking was beneficial to the resilience of cancer patients. People began to assume that “healing ties” or having a “fighting spirit” were determinants of cancer outcomes. In a landmark study, the Stanford psychiatrist David Spiegel found that women with metastatic breast cancer who had gotten support from group sessions had “lower mood-disturbance . . . and were less phobic.” They also appeared to live longer than the women in the control group—twice as long on average, or
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