From the Publisher

Why do some people find and sustain hope during difficult circumstances, while others do not? What can we learn from those who do, and how is their example applicable to our own lives? The Anatomy of Hope is a journey of inspiring discovery, spanning some thirty years of Dr. Jerome Groopman’s practice, during which he encountered many extraordinary people and sought to answer these questions.

This profound exploration begins when Groopman was a medical student, ignorant of the vital role of hope in patients’ lives–and it culminates in his remarkable quest to delineate a biology of hope. With appreciation for the human elements and the science, Groopman explains how to distinguish true hope from false hope–and how to gain an honest understanding of the reach and limits of this essential emotion.

The New York Times

If there is an ''anatomy'' here, it isn't an archetypal, unitary anatomy. Instead, hope turns out to be something negotiated between patients and physicians, imagined and reimagined at every visit. Oncologists need to rely on an incredible team of specialists: palliative-care physicians, social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists. Even so, the day-to-day practice of oncology is routinely humbled by the task. In its most introspective passages, Groopman's book manages to convey the perverse subtleties of these negotiations: Dan has to be tricked into hope; for Eva, hope becomes a joke that she snickers at, but never quite gets. In the end, you might not know how to define hope precisely - but that seems to be the point. Groopman succeeds principally because he refuses to offer a simple, easily digestible thesis. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

The Washington Post

Groopman writes with profound compassion. The kind of hope -- the kind of love -- that shines through this book's pages could have saved a cardiac patient like my father who, despising doctors and distrusting their motives, chose to die when his heart failed, rather than submit to surgery. It will undoubtedly save many other patients and their families. In body and in spirit. — Judith Warner

Publishers Weekly

In this provocative book, New Yorker staff writer and Harvard Medical School professor Groopman (Second Opinions; The Measure of Our Days) explores the way hope affects one's capacity to cope with serious illness. Drawing on his 30-year career in hematology and oncology, Groopman presents stories based on his patients and his own debilitating back injury. Through these moving if somewhat one-dimensional portraits, he reveals the role of memory, family and faith in hope and how they can influence healing by affecting treatment decisions and resilience. Sharing his own blunders and successes, Groopman underscores the power doctors and other health care providers have to instill or kill hope. He also explains that hope can be fostered without glossing over medical realities: "Hope... does not cast a veil over perception and thought. In this way, it is different from blind optimism: It brings reality into sharp focus." In the final chapters of the book, Groopman examines the existing science behind the mind-body connection by reviewing, for example, remarkable studies on the placebo effect. By the end of the book, Groopman successfully convinces that hope can offer not only solace but strength to those living with medical uncertainty. (Jan.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Readers wary of the "miraculous recovery" genre need not pass on Groopman's latest book (after The Measure of Our Days; Second Opinions). Despite its title, the text contains a satisfyingly gritty realism-in fact, Groopman's first four case studies end in death. That, in itself, quickly drew this reviewer into subsequent chapters in which the author develops the concepts of hope and choice and pursues both his personal interest in and his professional quest for their biological effects. Chair of medicine at Harvard and staff writer in medicine and biology for The New Yorker, Groopman investigates recent research detailing the effects of placebos, emotion, and belief on the nervous system. He finds that hope can begin a domino effect that neither patient nor health provider can predict. In comparison, Dr. Howard Spiro, in The Power of Hope, focuses on placebo history and research and its place in the context of other alternative remedies. Excelling in narrative, The Anatomy of Hope is strongly recommended for most public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/03.]-Andy Wickens, King Cty. Lib. Syst., WA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Doctor/author Groopman (Second Opinions, 2000, etc.) insightfully examines the nature of hope and the role it plays in recovery from illness. Stories from his medical education and 30 years of practice reveal what New Yorker staff writer Groopman (Medicine/Harvard) has learned about the connections between hope and illness. He was still in medical school when an Orthodox Jewish woman confided in him that she believed her cancer was a punishment from God. "Well prepared for the science [but] pitifully unprepared for the soul," Groopman was unable to reach out and give her the hope she needed to pursue a course of therapy. Then, as a young resident, he followed an older doctor's lead in offering false hope to a terminally ill woman, a disturbing experience that subsequently led him to veer too far in the direction of hope-crushing cold facts as a specialist in oncology and hematology. Perhaps the most powerful story Groopman tells is about a professor of pathology who, in full possession of all the grim facts about his stomach cancer, nevertheless held onto hope, persisted in excruciating therapy, and survived. From his patients, the author observed that hope is at the very heart of healing, whether it derives from faith in God and belief in an afterlife or from a personal philosophy that gives meaning to life and mortality. The author's personal experience of pain, frustration, and despair was also instructive. After suffering severe back pain for 19 years, Groopman followed the advice of a physician to seek relief by changing his beliefs about pain and acting on those new beliefs. Experiencing for himself the physical changes caused by regained hope, he began to question neurologists,experimental psychologists, and others about the biology of hope. He relates their discoveries here, going on to consider why some people can sustain hope but others cannot and clearly delineating the difference between false hope and true hope. A thoughtful message, movingly yet unsentimentally presented by a physician alert to medicine's human as well as its scientific side. Agent: Suzanne Gluck/William Morris

Product Details

• Table of Contents
• Reading Group Guide
• Read an Excerpt
• Read a Sample Chapter

Table of Contents

Reading Group Guide

1. How did Dr. Groopman’s attitude towards hope change over the course of his career? Do you think doctors are responsible for their patients’ morale, or should they simply provide the cold, hard facts? Can you think of an example from your own life where either approach was effective?

2. What is the difference between false hope and true hope? After his experience with Frances Walker, why was Dr. Richard Keyes so resistant to his own treatment? Conversely, what allowed George Griffin and Barbara Wilson such optimism in the face of their illnesses? Was this false or true hope?

3. Groopman discusses the important relationships his patients create with either their loved ones or their God. Think of a time in your life when such relationships changed your outlook or got you through a painful or difficult situation.

4. What were the steps Dan Conrad took to develop a more hopeful attitude towards his cancer? Ultimately, why was it so important for Dan to have another cancer survivor as his model of hope?

5. How did Groopman learn from his own injury? Why do you think he includes so many stories where doctors become patients? Do you think it’s important to have hope in order to understand it in others? Is there a time in your life where empathy played an important role in recovery?

6. Define hope. Do you see it as something tangible—something with a recognizable anatomy—or is it different for different people?

7. Groopman examines the biology of hope by comparing it to the placebo effect. Do you think these two concepts are akin? Does believing in something make it true? Is recovery a reflection of hope or is the correlationless clear-cut?

8. Is there a way to help someone else find hope? What would you do if you were Esther Weinberg’s doctor? Her friend? Her rabbi? Have you ever known anyone who has lost hope entirely?

9. In the conclusion, Groopman admits that “the question—why some people find and hold on to hope while others do not—was what moved [him] to write this book.” Can that question be answered? If so, how? Are we predispositioned for affective behavior or is hope something we can rationally control?

10. Does Groopman’s argument extend to more than sickness? Where in your life have you seen hope as a remedy?

11. What do you take from this book? What is one thing you’d like to change about your own outlook and what is one thing you can do to improve those of the people around you?

Read an Excerpt

Read a Sample Chapter

The Anatomy of Hope

Random House

Introduction

Why do some people find hope despite facing severe illness, while others do not? And can hope actually change the course of a malady, helping patients to prevail?

I looked for the answers in the lives of several extraordinary patients I cared for over the past thirty years. They led me on a journey of discovery from a point where hope was absent to a place where it could not be lost. Along the way, I learned the difference between true hope and false hope, and describe times when I foolishly thought the latter was justified. There were also instances when patients asserted their right to hope and I wrongly believed they had no reason to do so. Because they held on to hope even when I could not, they survived. And one woman of deep faith showed me that even when there is no longer hope for the body, there is always hope for the soul. Each person helped me see another dimension of the anatomy of hope.

Hope is one of our central emotions, but we are often at a loss when asked to define it. Many of us confuse hope with optimism, a prevailing attitude that "things turn out for the best." But hope differs from optimism. Hope does not arise from being told to "think positively," or from hearing an overly rosy forecast. Hope, unlike optimism, is rooted in unalloyed reality. Although there is no uniform definition of hope, I found one that seemed to capture what my patients had taught me. Hope is the elevating feeling we experience when we see-in the mind's eye-a path to a better future. Hope acknowledges the significant obstacles and deep pitfalls along that path. True hope has no room for delusion.

Clear-eyed, hope gives us the courage to confront our circumstances and the capacity to surmount them. For all my patients, hope, true hope, has proved as important as any medication I might prescribe or any procedure I might perform. Only well into my career did I come to realize this. During my training in medical school classrooms and on hospital teaching rounds, we saw patients as fascinating puzzles. Making a diagnosis and finding the optimal therapy were essentially detective work. We mined the stories of patients' lives for clues. Family background, experiences at the workplace, travel, personal habits, and relationships all gave hints to solving the clinical mystery. The family history provided information about inherited genes and how they predisposed people to one disorder or another; the workplace suggested potential exposure to carcinogenic chemicals or poisonous metals; travel could bring contact with arcane pathogens that populate far regions of the world; habits like smoking and drinking could promote pathology; and relationships helped uncover sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis, HIV, and gonorrhea.

Solving a complex case and identifying the best treatment is indeed an exhilarating intellectual exercise. But the background and stories of patients' lives give doctors the opportunity to probe another mystery: How do hope, and despair, factor into the equation of healing?

For nearly three decades I have practiced hematology and oncology, caring for patients with cancer, blood diseases, HIV, and hepatitis C. I have also labored in my laboratory, studying the genes and proteins that these disorders derange. During much of that time, at the bedside and at the laboratory bench, I failed to consider the impact of hope on my patients' illness. Yes, I gave the customary nod to it, but then I would focus squarely on interpreting their laboratory reports, reading their CAT scans, and studying their biopsies-all essential to diagnosis and treatment, but incomplete. What was missing had to be learned from experience. I had to be tested-not on paper but by overcoming adversity, both as physician and as patient.

A vast popular literature exists contending that positive emotions affect the body in health and disease. Much of it is vague, unsubstantiated, merely wishful thinking. These books depict hope as a magic wand in a fairy tale that will, by itself, miraculously restore a patient. As a rational scientist, trained to decode the sequence of DNA and decipher the function of proteins, I fled the fairy-tale claims of hope. In effect, I slammed the door on hope and closed off my mind to seriously considering it as a catalyst in the crucible of cure.

Personal experience opened my mind. For some nineteen years after failed spine surgery, I lived in a labyrinth of relapsing pain and debility. Then, through a series of chance circumstances, I found an exit. I felt I had been given back my life. I recognized that only hope could have made my recovery possible. Rekindled hope gave me the courage to embark on an arduous and contrarian treatment program, and the resilience to endure it.

Without hope, I would have been locked forever in that prison of pain. But I also sensed that hope had done more than push me to take a chance and not give up. It seemed to exert potent and palpable effects not only on my psychology but on my physiology.

As a scientist, I distrusted my own experience, and set out on a personal journey to discover whether the energizing feeling of hope can in fact contribute to recovery. I found that there is an authentic biology of hope. But how far does it reach? And what are its limits? Researchers are learning that a change in mind-set has the power to alter neurochemistry. Belief and expectation-the key elements of hope-can block pain by releasing the brain's endorphins and enkephalins, mimicking the effects of morphine. In some cases, hope can also have important effects on fundamental physiological processes like respiration, circulation, and motor function. During the course of an illness, then, hope can be imagined as a domino effect, a chain reaction in which each link makes improvement more likely. It changes us profoundly in spirit and in body.

Every day I look for hope, for my patients, for my loved ones, and for myself. It is an ongoing search. Here I tell what I have found.

Chapter One

In July 1975, I entered my fourth and final year of medical school at Columbia University in New York City. I had completed all my required courses except surgery and was eager to engage in its drama.

Surgeons acted boldly and decisively. They achieved cures, opening an intestinal blockage, repairing a torn artery, draining a deep abscess, and made the patient whole again. Their art required extraordinary precision and self-control, a discipline of body and mind that was most evident in the operating room, because even minor mistakes-too much pressure on a scalpel, too little tension on a suture, too deep probing of a tissue-could spell disaster. In the hospital, surgeons were viewed as the emperors of the clinical staff, their every command obeyed. We students were their foot soldiers. I was intoxicated with the idea of being part of their world.

The surgical team I joined was headed by Dr. William Foster. Foster was a tall, imposing man with sharp features like cut timber. His rounds began at dawn, followed by two or three surgeries that lasted until late afternoon. As is typical in a teaching hospital, all of Dr. Foster's patients were assigned to medical students who learned the basics of diagnosis and treatment by following cases. Not long after I began the course, I was designated as the student to help care for Esther Weinberg, a young woman who had a mass in her left breast.

Esther Weinberg was twenty-nine years old, full-bodied, with almond-brown eyes. She was a member of the Orthodox Jewish community in Washington Heights, the neighborhood adjoining Columbia's medical school. When I entered her room, Esther was lying on the bed, reading from a small prayer book. Her head was covered by a blue kerchief in the typical sign of modesty among married Orthodox women, whose hair, as a manifestation of their beauty, is not to be seen by men other than their husbands.

"I'm Jerry Groopman, Dr. Foster's student," I said by way of introduction. I wore the uniform of the medical student, a short, starched white jacket with my name on a badge over the right breast pocket. The badge conspicuously lacked the initials "M.D." Esther quickly took my measure, her eyes lingering over my name badge.

I did not reach out to shake her hand. Men do not touch strictly Orthodox women, even in a casual way.

Esther's eyes returned to my name badge, then to my face. I guessed at what was crossing her mind: whether my not shaking her hand indicated that I was Jewish and knowledgeable of the Orthodox prohibition, or simply an impolite student. "Groopman" was Dutch in origin, not a giveaway. Dr. Foster had described Esther as anxious, and I felt that disclosing our shared heritage would put her at ease.

"Shalom aleichem," I said, the traditional greeting of "Peace be with you."

Instead of offering a welcoming smile, her face drew tight.

Following protocol, I began the clinical interview, which includes taking a family and social history. Esther Weinberg, née Siegman, was born in Europe in 1946. Her family was from Leipzig, Germany, and of its more than one hundred members, only her parents had survived the Nazi camps. The Siegmans immigrated to America in the early 1950s. Esther married at the age of nineteen, had her first child-a girl-a year after the wedding, and then twin girls eighteen months later. Her father died of a stroke not long after. Over the last year, she had worked as the personal secretary for the owner of a cleaning service in midtown Manhattan; her job was strictly clerical, without exposure to toxic solvents that can be carcinogenic.

One of the primary risk factors for breast cancer is a family history of the disease. Esther had limited knowledge of those who had perished in the war, but she recalled no afflicted relatives. Another major risk is prolonged and uninterrupted exposure to estrogen, which occurs when menarche, the onset of menses, happens at a very young age, or when pregnancy occurs later in life or not at all. But Esther had entered puberty at thirteen, a typical time, and carried and nursed three children in her twenties. This early motherhood would, if anything, lower her risk for breast cancer.

I conducted the physical examination that I was taught to perform specifically on women, to convey a sense of propriety and respect for their body. I covered each breast in turn as I palpated for irregularities. I was taken aback by what I found. The mass in her left breast was very large, about the size of a golf ball, easily felt above the nipple. There were many lymph nodes in the left armpit, also large and rock-hard.

For a cancer to grow to this size, and to spread into the adjoining lymph nodes, takes many months, if not years. Its prognosis, dictated by the dimensions of the tumor and the numbers of lymph nodes containing metastatic deposits, was very poor. How could a seemingly attentive young woman have waited so long to consult a doctor?

I did not ask. Dr. Foster strictly defined boundaries for students on his surgical team. Our role was to observe and learn, to do only what he told us to do.

"We will be making rounds with Dr. Foster later in the day," I said. "I wish you the best with the surgery."

"God willing" was her reply.

I started to leave.

Esther called after me, "Can I talk to you?"

"Of course," I said. A patient choosing to talk to us students made us feel very much like the doctors we wanted to be.

"Maybe later," she said uncertainly.

That afternoon, William Foster stood at the foot of Esther Weinberg's bed, flanked on his left by his three students, and on his right by the team's two residents. The waning July daylight cast long shadows across the room. I summarized the reason for admission, the physical findings, and the planned procedure, directing my words to Dr. Foster. The mass was almost certainly malignant, and it appeared to be quite advanced; it would first be treated by surgery, followed by chemotherapy. I went on with my charge as a student, reviewing for the team what Mrs. Weinberg had been told by Dr. Foster in his office about the impending operation. After she was anesthetized in the operating room, a biopsy would be taken of the mass, and if it proved to be malignant, as expected, a radical mastectomy would be performed right away. This was the approach handed down from William Halsted, an eminent surgeon who practiced in the early 1900s at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Foster nodded and walked deliberately to the left side of the bed. He held Esther Weinberg's hand in his. He asked if she had any questions about the impending operation.

"Will Dr. Groopman be with me when I wake up after the surgery? I'd like him there."

Dr. Foster shot me a brief, quizzical look.

I was unsure why Esther wanted me at her side when she regained consciousness. I studied her face for a clue, but it revealed none.

"Mr. Groopman, like every student, follows his patients from the time of admission into the operating room and then through postoperative care. Be assured that I will discuss fully with you what we found at surgery and what next steps need to be taken."

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Anatomy of Hope by Jerome Groopman Copyright © 2003 by Jerome Groopman, M.D.,. Excerpted by permission.
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