Can psychotherapy cure diabetes and cancer?

Release date: 2015-01-06

One day in the fall of 1981, in front of a converted monastery in New Hampshire, eight older men in their 70s walked off the van. They faltered, some of them bent like hunchbacks like arthritis patients, and two were crutches. After they entered the door, it was like entering a time tunnel. In the old-fashioned radio, Perry Como (known as "Mr. C", American singer, TV star) sang in a low voice. On the black and white TV set, Ed Sullivan (American entertainment writer and TV presenter) welcomed the guests. Everything here—including the books on the shelves and the magazines scattered around—is designed and laid out to create the 1959 atmosphere. In five days, it will be a temporary home for these elderly people. They were involved in a “radical experiment” carefully planned by young psychologist Ellen Langer.

Although the subjects were in good health, aging has left a mark on them. "At the time, there was no such concept as '75 years old is the new 55 years old'," said Lange, now 67 years old, who is the longest-serving psychology professor at Harvard University. These elderly people received a series of tests before arrival at the experimental site, such as dexterity, grip, flexibility, hearing and vision, memory and cognitive function - these were probably the closest age test biomarkers mastered by geronologists. Indicator of matter. Lange predicts that after five days, when the subjects end the high-intensity psychological intervention, these indicators will be greatly improved.

Prior to this, Lange had conducted two studies involving elderly patients. One of the findings, under the incentive of incentives, elderly people in the early stages of memory loss can get better results in memory tests. This shows that in many cases, the outside world is indifferently mistaken as a brain degradation. In another study now recognized as a classic of social psychology, Lange distributes indoor plants to two elderly people in nursing homes. She told a group of seniors that they were responsible for feeding the plants and allowed them to make choices about their schedule. Another group of elderly people was told that the plants were taken care of by the staff and they did not have any choices for the work schedule. After 18 months, the group of people who are caring for plants and can make decisions about their schedules are twice as likely as the control group.

In Lange's view, the evidence shows that the biomedical model at the time—that is, the mind and the body ran apart—has fallen into misunderstanding. In December, when I saw her in her office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she said that at the time, the medical community believed that "pathogen invasion is the only way to cause illness in the human body, and to restore health, only to get rid of pathogens." One of the ideas she came up with was that people need some sort of psychological “triggering stimulus” to heal, that is, to trigger the body to use all the means of rehabilitation. Bringing the older men mentioned above to New Hampshire for what she later called "counter-clockwise" research is one way to test this hypothesis.

She asked the old people in the experimental group not to stop at the old times, but to let themselves go back and inhabit them - "trying to get back from the psychological level 22 years ago," Lange described to me. She also said to them: "We have good reason to believe that if you can do this successfully, you will feel that you are the one in 1959." From the moment they entered the door, they were treated as young. People treat. They were told that they had to carry their luggage upstairs, even if they only had one shirt at a time.

Every day, they discuss sports (Johnny Unitas (who won the National Football League Most Valuable Player) or Wilt Chamberlain [former US NBA League professional basketball player] and "current affairs" "(The first satellite launched by the United States), or a review of the movie I just watched ("Anatomy of a Murder" starring Jimmy Stewart) - they use the present tense to talk about these The items and events of the late 1950s are one of Lange's main "triggering" strategies. There won't be anything, including mirrors and modern clothing, to disturb the illusion of this "22 years back in time", even if there are photos, it is their own portrait when they were young.

At the end of this small stay, the old people were again inspected. The experimental group was far superior to the control group in many indicators. The latter came to the monastery before, but the researchers only encouraged them to recall the past without asking them to imagine returning to their youth. The old man in the experimental group was more flexible and his hands were more dexterous, and his back was quite straighter when he was sitting – as Lange had guessed. Perhaps the most incredible thing is that their vision has improved. Independent judges said they looked younger. Lange told me that the subjects in the experimental group "returned their mood to a young age" and their bodies were adjusted accordingly.

The results of the experiment are fantastic and unbelievable. “It sounds like Lourdes (a small town in the south of France, a famous pilgrimage site, where people can be cured). Lange said. Although she and her students introduced the experiment in a chapter in the Higher Stages of Human Development published by Oxford University Press, they omitted a lot. The moving plot, for example, was waiting for the bus to return to Cambridge. These old bones, which seemed to be squeaky, spontaneously organized a touch-up football game. Out of concern for the rejection, Lange did not dare to write the content in the article submitted to the publication.

After all, this is just a small sample study of five days, and there are a lot of potentially confusing variables in the design. (Perhaps the exhilarating novelty of the entire experiment, or the extra effort of the subject to please the tester, which may explain some significant changes in certain indicators to some extent.) But more fundamentally, this The unconventional nature of the research made Lange less interesting to show everywhere. “In my opinion, this is too far from the research work that was taking place in the field at the time,” she said. “Know that no one talked about mind-body medicine at the time.”

Lange did not try to repeat the experiment, mainly because it was too complicated and costly. Every time she had the idea of ​​trying again, she dissuaded herself. Until 2010, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) hired Lange as a consultant, repeated the experiment and made it into a program called "The Young Ones", which put six old former stars. As an experimental object.

These stars were sent by vintage cars to a country house that was carefully converted into a 1975 style (even including the cheesy wall art of that period). A week later, they reappeared, and each one looked youthful, just like the old man who was over 70 years old in the Lange experiment. Their test indicators have also improved significantly. Someone was still in a Wheelchair when they entered, but they could walk on their own with a cane. There is another one who even wears socks at the beginning and needs help from others. On the eve of the end of the experiment, he has arranged a farewell dinner, and he will be busy and busy. Others walked straighter when they walked, and they really looked younger. They are no longer being shelved, but once again feel that they are important and valuable. Later, Lange thought that awakening self-awareness may play a central role in the magical changes in their physical rejuvenation.

The program, which was broadcast in four episodes, was nominated for the Bafta Award (equivalent to the Emmy Award in the UK) and sparked new attention to Lange's research. Last year, a friend of Lange invited Jeffrey Rediger, a psychiatrist, medical and clinical director at Harvard's McLean Hospital, to watch this story with colleagues. program. Rediger has long known about Lange's research in New Hampshire, but this version of the TV production vividly shows the tempting impact of the study.

"Lange is one of the few people who really know how to do at Harvard," Rediger told me. “That is to say, health and disease are rooted in our thoughts and moods to a greater extent, and how we experience ourselves in the world, which is not understood by existing medical models.”

Last winter, I walked with Lange from the campus to her house, which was as cold as a cold room. The back door was open all day, so that the old West Highland White Terrier, Gus, she loved, was free to run to the yard. (Langer's companion, Nancy Hemenway is usually at home, but that day just went out.) Gus suffers from a brain tumor. "It is said that it will die a year ago," Lange said. "But I think it might not last longer than all of us."

Lange is busy in the kitchen, taking out the lasagna to prepare for the Italian lasagna, so that you can entertain everyone at the end of the party. This is the last time she has met her classmates for some time to come – after the start of the winter vacation, everyone will go their separate ways, and she is ready to leave for the holiday in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where she and Nancy are still there. A residence. (Lange plans to participate in weekly lab meetings via Skype.)

“Is this a recipe for family?” I asked for dinner.

"I never stick to the recipe - you know," she said as she piled a lot of cheese on her face. "Moreover, even if I messed up, what about it? This is not the last supper; even if I do not eat the lasagna, will my students not love me?"

Born in the Bronx, Lange studied chemistry at New York University and thought about going to school later. However, after she listened to Psych 101, everything changed. Professor Philip Zimbardo, who she studied, later went to Stanford University to teach and studied the influence of authority and obedience in famous prison experiments. From a lecture by Professor Zimbardo, Lange found that human behavior was more interesting than what she had learned before, so she quickly changed her major.

Her postgraduate degree was spent at Yale University, where a poker game inspired her to write a doctoral thesis about the whims of people who are usually logical. Lange's conclusion is that even smart people are prone to fall into the "control illusion" of accidents. We really can't be a highly rational creature. Cognitive bias often leads us in the wrong direction. Lange believes that people develop a habit of thinking without thinking, which makes them easily misleading by plausible ideas. This concept was formed earlier than the “behavioral economics” of many schools, and earlier than the research by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman. But with many perseverances to delve into a concept until it is different for all of its own researchers, Lange's thinking often turns to other fields of research. "I have never been able to chase a question to break the casserole to the end, perhaps this is a character defect," she said. "Part of the reason is that I always have too many ideas. If things that excite me now don't make a name, that's okay, because there is always the next possibility."

In the 1970s, Lange gradually became convinced that most people were not only astrayed by their own prejudice, but also extremely careless about what happened around them. As she said, "They are absent-minded." Lange's reasoning is that when you are absent-minded, you are easily taken away. She has set up a number of studies to reveal that people's ideas and behaviors are easily manipulated by subtle "triggering stimuli."

In one study, she and her colleagues found that as long as it appeared to be similar to other official internal notices, even a ridiculous cross-departmental notice would allow office workers to follow suit. In another study created in collaboration with her at Yale University's mentor, Robert Abelson, they asked behavioral therapists and traditional therapists to watch an identity labeled as "patient" or "job seeker." The person interviewed the video and then evaluated the person. Whether it is a so-called "patient" or "job seeker", the behavioral therapist thinks the respondent is quite comfortable. But in the eyes of traditional healers, respondents with “patient” status are significantly more uneasy. Lange pointed out that this shows that even a well-trained observer "is easily confused by the label."

Lange said that if people can learn to keep more snacks and always perceive the choices that they can grasp, then they will be able to fully realize their potential and improve their health. Lange’s technique of reaching a state of concentration is different from the “wonderful meditation” in the East, which is a popular way of thinking. The latter is a cognition of the thoughts and feelings drifting in your mind. What Lange emphasizes is to pay attention to the subtle changes in your every moment, from the difference in the face of the spouse across the breakfast table to the change in your asthma symptoms. When we are "actively discovering new differences, not relying on habitual" classifications, we really feel that we are alive; and when we feel that we are alive, we can improve. Indeed, at the beginning of his career, Lange was aiming at "benefit and enhanced performance."

For the past 20 years, Martin Seligman has been recognized as the father of positive psychology. With his early research work in the field, Lange was hailed as the mother of positive psychology by Tal Ben-Shahar, who taught a popular undergraduate course at Harvard University before 2008. ".

Lange believes that one of the ways to enhance well-being is to use a variety of placebos. Placebos are not just sugar pills that pretend to be drugs (although that is literally defined); any intervention that is harmless, that the recipient believes to be effective, and that produces measurable physiological changes can be called a placebo. The placebo effect is a striking phenomenon that has not yet been well understood. A complete field of research, such as psycho-neurological immunology and psychoendocrine, has emerged to specifically explore the relationship between psychological and physiological processes. Neuroscientists attempt to track what happens to the brain when it relieves pain or relieves Parkinson's disease by expectation. More traditional medical researchers acknowledge the role of the placebo effect and include these effects in their own experiments. But Lange went further. She believes that the placebo effect is huge – in many cases, they may actually be the main cause of the outcome.

She cites her own research conducted in a hair salon in 2009 as an example. The study was inspired by another study conducted by three scientists nearly 10 years ago. They tracked more than 4,000 subjects over a 20-year period and found that men who were bald when joining the study were more likely than men with lucrative hair. Suffering from prostate cancer. Researchers are not sure where this association comes from, but they suspect that this may be because androgen (including testosterone) has an effect on the scalp and prostate. Lange proposed another theory: "Alopecia is one of the hints of aging. Therefore, men who are bald early may feel older and expect to age faster." And this expectation may actually lead them to encounter Aging effect. To explore this relationship between aging expectations and healthy physical signs, Lange and her colleagues designed a study at a hair salon. They asked the research assistants to contact 47 women (aged from 27 to 83 years old) who had haircuts, hair dyes or first cuts in the hair salon and recorded their blood pressure readings. After the subjects had a good hair style, they filled out a questionnaire on their own appearance and measured blood pressure again. In a paper published in the 2010 issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, they reported that subjects who thought they were younger after a good haircut had lower blood pressure.

A few years ago, Lange and her student Alia Crum conducted a study and published it in the journal Psychological Science. The study involved 84 hotel room waitresses. Most of them reported that they did not have any exercise opportunities during a typical week of work. The researchers led the waitresses in the experimental group to look at their work in a different way, telling them that cleaning the room is actually a kind of exercise that is not strong enough, and the amount of exercise is not less than that recommended by the Secretary for Health. After their expected changes, the weight of these waitresses was reduced relative to the control group (other indicators such as body mass index [BMI] and waist-to-hip ratio also improved). All other factors remain constant. The only change is the mental state of the subject.

Critics look for other explanations, such as statistical errors, or subtle behavioral changes in the weight loss group that Lange failed to account for. Otherwise, such results seem to be contrary to physics. "I want to say to this, 'No subject is absolutely perfect,'" Lange responded. “If contemporary physics can't explain these phenomena, maybe physics itself needs some change.”

Lange said that during her career, she has written or collaborated with others to write more than 200 research papers, and now she continues to publish a lot of research at an alarming rate. Just before her winter vacation, when she met with more than 20 students and postdocs, Lange looked at the progress of nearly 30 experiments around the table, all of which involved manipulating the perception of the subject. Some experiments use a special clock that can run at half or twice the speed of a normal clock. In one study, subjects were deceived after waking up, letting them think they slept longer or shorter than they actually were. Lange envisions that the scores of these subjects' short-term memory and response time will change accordingly, regardless of how long their actual sleep time is. In an unpublished diabetes study, Lange wondered whether biochemical tests in patients with type 2 diabetes could be manipulated through the same psychological intervention, the subject's perception of how long it had been. Her theory is that the blood sugar level of a diabetic person will fluctuate in accordance with the time perceived by the subject (rather than the actual time); in other words, it will rise or fall according to the subject's expectations. This is the case with experimental data. This fall, when students report her results to her by email, she can hardly suppress her inner excitement. She told me: "This is the beginning of treating diabetes with psychotherapy!"

Some new experiments rely on variables that change self-perception. In a study to be conducted in the popular virtual game world "Second Life," subjects will watch their digital figures play tennis and become slimmer due to physical exertion. Lange hopes to study whether the avatar will have a physiological impact on the real person. "You see yourself playing tennis," Lange said. “The question is: will people lose weight? We will wait and see.”

Some of Lange's colleagues in the academic circle affirmed her value and influence in the field of psychology, and appreciated her unique wisdom and ingenious research design. Harvard professor and writer Steven Pinker told me that she has an important place within the college, and that the college often breeds “mavericks who make non-traditional projects,” including “Berch BF Skinner's Utopia novels and manifestations, Herb Kelman's meeting group that brings together Arab and Israeli activists – not to mention 蒂Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (renamed Ram Dass)."

However, Langer’s sensibility is sometimes incompatible with the rigor of contemporary academia. Sometimes, she gives the same amount of inspiration and peer-reviewed research. She vaguely told me that the “counter-clockwise” study she had done in New Hampshire had been “repeated” three times in the UK, the Netherlands and South Korea. But these are not experiments conducted under strict laboratory conditions, but activities for making TV programs. James Coyne, an honorary retired professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and a frequently published article revealing pseudoscience, said that the study that made Lange famous (the elderly and plants in the nursing home), “It doesn’t seem to have much credibility today, nor will it meet the rigorous standards that are tightened today.” (But Cohen also admitted, “Most of the work in the 1970s, including my own’ depression. This is also the case for patients with symptoms that can cause depression in other people.”) Coin said that Lange’s long-term contribution “will be reflected in the thinking and experiment that they encourage”.

Four years ago, Lange and his colleagues published a study in Psychological Science, the closest spiritual study to the “counter-clockwise” study in New Hampshire. The placebo for this study is still some kind of health-triggered stimulus, some kind of scenario suggestion. The investigators sent the two groups of subjects separately to the flight simulator, asking one group of subjects to envision themselves as air force pilots and to have them wear flight suits while maneuvering the simulated flight. The other group was told that the simulator was broken and they only had to pretend to be manipulating the aircraft. Subsequently, the two groups received an eyesight test. As a result, the "pilot group" test results were 40% higher than the other group. Lange concluded that it is clear that "manipulating mentality can offset the assumed physiological limitations." If a hint can change your vision, Lange thinks, there is no reason not to dare to try almost anything. After that, she repeatedly said that the ultimate goal is to return "healthy control to ourselves."

Last spring, Lange and postdoctoral researcher Deborah Phillips talked about "counter-clockwise" research during the chat. For more than 30 years since then, Lange has explored multiple aspects of health psychology and has done a lot of experiments using the power of thinking to alleviate various illnesses. Maybe now it’s time to go "counterclockwise" again. But if it really needs to be done, this time she wants to increase her bet: Can they narrow the cancer of cancer patients? Lange often said that she doesn't know where her strange ideas come from, but this time, she The source of inspiration is obvious: at the age of 29, her mother died of metastatic breast cancer at the age of 56.

Phillips suggested that perhaps they should start with early cancer that is considered to have a greater hope of cure, but Lange's attitude is firm: it must be a cancer with high mortality, common, and traditional Western medicine. Finally, she chose stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. The treatment of such cases is usually framed in the so-called "comfortable care" category. Lange said: "The medical profession has given up these patients."

The study will be conducted in the spring and will be designed to recruit three groups of women with stage 4 breast cancer who are stable and receiving hormone therapy, 24 in each group. Two of these groups will be gathered at the resort of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and will be supervised by Lange and her researchers. The experimental team will “traverse” back to 2003 – that is, they are still in good health, life has not been shrouded in the shadow of death, and the future is full of embarrassment – ​​living in such an environment for a week. They will be told to do as much as possible back to the year. There will be no things related to the moment inside the resort (in this case, it will be like this outside the resort). The living area will feature magazines at the turn of the century, as well as movie DVDs such as Titanic and The Big Lebowski. San Miguel de Allende is known for its mysterious healing mineral hot springs nearby, and is listed as an Unesco World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Many of the buildings here look like hundreds of years ago. . Lange said: "The town is like a time capsule." (San Miguel's other group of subjects will be supported by cancer patients, but will not cross back to the past; the third group will not be subject to any research intervention. )

As with the original “counterclockwise” experiment, subjects were tested for relevant indicators before and after the experiment. This time, the main test was the size of the tumor and the level of circulating protein known to be produced by cancer cells in the blood. Variables such as mood, energy, and pain level. The experimental group will also carry some triggers that help create the atmosphere of the year, like the participants in the New Hampshire experiment, such as photos of their own youth. “We won’t ask them to move their luggage upstairs,” Lange said, but in other ways they are encouraged to be as self-reliant as possible.

Researchers will encourage these women to think about their situation in a different way, trying to abandon the negative information they have absorbed during the medical system's previous treatment. Lange said that this is crucial because just as a mentality can make things go better, it can also make things worse. The anti-placebo effect is the other side of the more positive placebo effect. Lange said one of the worst anti-placebo effects may occur when a patient learns about a disease from a doctor. Lange said that the diagnosis itself is the trigger for the symptoms that the patient expects to feel. “If you change a word here or there, the results can be quite different,” she said. She introduced me to a study she did in 2010 but has not yet published. The study found that patients who considered themselves “in remission” had poorer physical function and overall health than those who believed they had “cure” breast cancer, and often felt more painful.

Therefore, there will be no mention of cancer “victims” or “fight” with “chronic” diseases. "When you use the word 'fighting', you have already admitted that the opponent is very strong," Lange said. “And 'chronic' is often understood as 'uncontrollable' – this is not something that the subject can know.”

Each subject certainly wants to improve, and the entire experiment is designed to encourage them to enter a better track. Therefore, it can be said that this study is an open placebo experiment. For a long time, Lange has always believed that it is possible to let people stimulate the positive effects in their bodies, in other words, "decision" to make themselves better. Last fall, she tested it against the proposition: she recruited a group of healthy subjects and gave them a task: to make themselves feel uncomfortable. The subjects watched a video of people coughing and sneezing, and a lot of paper towels were placed around them. The researchers encouraged the experimental group to behave like a cold. The experiment did not have any deceptive ingredients: for example, the subject was not misled, thinking that he was in the germ room. This is a definitive experiment to see if they can subjectively change their immune system in a measurable way.

In this ongoing study, 40% of the experimental group reported a cold after the experiment, while only 10% of the control reported cold symptoms. This result has greatly encouraged Lange. She asked for further analysis to find out more accurate evidence that they did have a cold by testing the level of IgA antibodies in the saliva of the subjects (a characterization of elevated immune system responses). In February of this year, the results came out. All subjects who reported symptoms of a cold had higher levels of IgA antibodies.

The placebo effect has previously been shown to act on the immune system. But this study may show for the first time that this effect works in a different way (ie, a will act). Fabrizio Benedetti, an Italian neurologist who is an authoritative expert on placebo effects, said: "As far as we know, the placebo response in the immune system can be attributed to unconscious classical conditioning. In Benedetti's experiment, the psychological suggestion implanted in the subject's mind directly caused a physiological reaction, just as the dinner bell caused the dog's salivary gland secretion. (In one study, healthy volunteers got a placebo: a psychological suggestion that they thought that any pain they experienced was actually good for their health. As a result, the level of natural analgesics they produced in their bodies Benedetti pointed out: "There is no evidence that expectations can work." Now, Lange plans to further analyze the saliva of the subjects to see if they actually have rhinovirus, not just high. IgA antibody levels.

It is tempting to disclose the potential impact of a placebo (that is, we know that we are taking only sugar pills, but it still produces the effects of the drug). If you get a placebo effect without deception, many of the ethical issues that plague the placebo study will no longer exist. In a study published in the Journal of the Public Library of Science (PLOS One) in 2010, Harvard Medical School professor Ted Kaptchuk and colleagues gave irritable bowel syndrome The patients in the trial group were given a placebo with the words "placebo." Their symptoms were significantly reduced compared to the untreated control group. Lange said: "In a way, everyone realizes that they are a placebo."

Lange's cancer research must be approved by three human subject ethics committees prior to launch. The three institutions are located in Mexico, one at Harvard University's Department of Psychology, and the University of Southern California (USC) School of Medicine was one of them, and the oncologist Deb, who recruited subjects for Lange's research. · Debu Tripathy was a medical professor there until recently. In June of this year, when the University of Southern California committee asked them to "slightly improve" the language used, the project fell into stagnation. “A lot of the experiment is outrageous to the world,” Lange told me at the time. “They asked me to add a consent form and let the participants sign the statement: they knew the experiment didn’t have any known benefits for them. But this just introduced an anti-placebo effect!” (currently the study needs to be located Cuipati is now working there, approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.)

Like the old man in the New Hampshire study, the cancer patients in Lange's San Miguel study will also have a wonderful week. This time, art classes, cooking classes and writing classes will be offered to help them distract themselves from their illness and re-enter them. Cuipati said that, like physical reality, the fear of advanced cancer itself may also weaken the patient's ability. He said some patients showed symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). There is strong evidence that other people's support can greatly improve the quality of life of cancer patients, but there is relatively little evidence that this support can improve the health prospects of patients.

I have no precedent for Trichati to ask Lange for the research he is trying to do. “Well, the improvement in medical emotional state seems to lead to a lot of improvement in the condition,” he said. “For example, we know that Tibetan monks can lower their blood pressure by meditating. Meditation patients will improve their medical indicators after making behavioral changes, for example, heart attacks are reduced. As for cancer, it is harder to say clearly. ”

The record of positive psychology in dealing with cancer is not very good. Indeed, James Coin and his colleagues had followed up to 1093 patients with advanced head and neck cancer for nine years and found that even the most optimistic subjects did not live longer than the most pessimistic.

Cuipati pointed out that some cancer patients respond better to interventions than others. “However, even with high-dose chemotherapy, you rarely see 'complete response', ie (advanced breast cancer) completely disappears...so if we can see that result, it will soon be in the medical journal It caused a sensation."

One day in February, Lange sat on the terrace of her mountain view room in Puerto Vallarta. An iguana that was as long as a celery stem quickly crossed the high railing, and several dogs were arrogant. "This is Edda," Lange said. "Is it Ada? They have two, it's hard to tell." When the iguana first appeared and began to devour hibiscus flowers, Lange was shocked. Now, she and Nancy are free to feed the petals to them. "Things are like this," she said. "You may be afraid. You can also give it a name and make it a pet."

Lange stared at the deep blue sea in the direction of the lagoon. In the early part of her career, she experimented with whether dolphins would prefer to swim with people in a state of righteous thoughts.在过去的几天里，她在与一位作家互通电子邮件，那人想要和她一起待上一两个星期，为一部好莱坞传记片的剧本采集素材。

兰格告诉我，她选择在圣米格尔进行新的“逆时针”研究，主要是因为该镇提供的优厚条件让她“无法拒绝”。一群当地商人深信将兰格的名字与圣米格尔联系在一起将很有价值，于是他们为兰格的实验安排了免费住宿。他们还鼓励她建设一座兰格正念研究所(Langer Mindfulness Institute)，既开展研究，又运营静思休养之地。(当地的一位开发商还捐赠给她一栋精美的城堡，用作研究所员工的宿舍，这座城堡位于他那由尼克·佛度[Nick Faldo，英国职业高尔夫球手]设计的高尔夫球场旁边。)从明年的某个时候开始，成年人将可以报名参加为期一周的“逆时针”付费体验，想必将和新罕布什尔州实验的受试者们一样，有机会享受某些返老还童的益处。

兰格说，她也正在与澳大利亚的一些保健和商业组织商谈建立第二家研究机构，该机构也将接受付费客户，他们将通过多种认知行为技巧和练习来学习变得更加专注。她已经在印度班加罗尔开设了一家正念研究所，那里的研究人员正在进行一项研究，探讨正念能否阻止前列腺癌的扩散。

兰格不认为这种静养机构将会收费，而且价格高昂有什么错。(这一点其实也是经过盘算的：在缺乏其他暗示的情况下，人们倾向于超出比例地注重比较昂贵的东西。杜克大学[Duke]心理学家丹·艾瑞里[Dan Ariely]及其同事们发现，价格较高的安慰剂比便宜安慰剂更有效。)我问她，此类明显商业化的项目会不会削弱她的学术可信度?兰格微微转了转她的眼睛。“你看，我不是40岁的人了。我已经做出了自己该做的贡献，再说，将它推广给更多的人并没有什么不妥，因为我深信它一定有效。”

医学界的同事们问兰格，她这项癌症研究会不会弄巧成拙，害自己栽个跟头?或许她低估了自己一辈子的研究成果因此遭遇挫折的潜在风险?还有一个可能性是，病情没能好转的受试者因这一体验而更加意志消沉。记者芭芭拉·埃伦赖希(Barbara Ehrenreich)在她的回忆录《失控的正向思考》(Bright-sided)中，尖锐地批评了当她身患乳腺癌时，各路“阳光族”向她狂轰滥炸“积极思维”。在那种情况下，病情未见起色的患者会觉得仿佛是自己做错了什么。

2010年，兰格在一个讲座上谈到，当我们说“与癌症战斗”的时候，我们实际上赋予了疾病威力。讲座结束后，一名男子拦住了她，劈头痛斥了她的观点。原来他的妻子死于乳腺癌。“他说她一直在与病魔抗争，而按照我的说法，似乎这全是她的错，”兰格向我转述道。

兰格向那名先生道了歉。“你说的这些都很有道理，我很抱歉我没有应对这些问题，”她说。“但请让我解释，是文化让我们觉得自己无能为力。我并没有埋怨你的妻子;我只是在谴责这种文化。”兰格梦想着有那么一天，当事情出错时，人们最先做出的反应不是责备。相反，我们将只是充分发挥自己的思维威力——她相信，这力量将比我们所想像的大得多。

Source: bio360

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