Crying and health

Abstract

In the popular press there is little doubt that crying is healthy. Cornelius (1986) systematically examined the content of popular articles on weeping published mainly in the United States from the Mid-1800's to 1985. This yielded a total of 70 articles. As one of the major themes, the author identified the conviction that failure to cry results in negative (health) consequences. In no less than 94 percent of the articles the advice to the readers was to let their tears flow. In particular, in the articles published after 1950, Cornelius showed, the classic psychosomatic point of view (cf. Groen, 1957) was popularized. Crying was considered to be an important means for releasing physiological tension. If tension was not released by crying, it might find an outlet elsewhere, for instance, by affecting the body and resulting in disease.

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