What Is Type A Coronary Prone Behavior?
In 1959, a paper by Meyer (Mike) Friedman and Ray Rosenman appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association entitled “Association of specific overt behavior patterns with blood and cardiovascular findings: Blood cholesterol level, blood clotting time, incidence of arcus senilis and clinical coronary artery disease.” (Friedman & Rosenman, 1959) The subtitle linking specific behavioral traits with things like blood cholesterol, clotting time, arcus senilis and coronary disease that had no apparent relationship to each other must have seemed strange to many readers. Neither of these two cardiologists had any expertise in psychology, which may have been fortuitous, since they had no preconceived notions. What they did have was an unusual combination of curiosity, diagnostic acumen and a bio-psychosocial approach to the patient as a person, rather than someone to be treated in a cookbook fashion based on laboratory tests, symptoms or signs. As noted, psychiatrists and others inte
