Swedish subjects with relatively severe cardiovascular heart disease frequently expressed poor childhood and adult interpersonal relationships, felt they had too low a level of income, and regretted their past and/or current working conditions. Evidence that the lack of human companionship or disrupted social relationships may lead to the development of arteriosclerosis and sudden death can also be found because they are aggressively involved in a chronic incessant struggle to achieve more and more in less and less time, against the opposing efforts of other things and other persons. People suffering from this personality syndrome tend to develop arteriosclerosis prematurely and are far more subject to sudden death than individuals who do not have these Type A personality traits. 

Even when the Type A person exercises moderately and maintains a well-balanced diet, he is much more likely to suffer from the development of premature cardiac disease and death than the non-Type A person. I have examined thousands of individuals from all walks of life, long before these individuals developed any measurable symptoms of coronary heart disease. If the individual had a Type A personality profile, the researchers were able to predict with a high degree of certainty that premature cardiac disease would eventually manifest itself. While the great majority of the individuals I examined were married, I observed that Type A personality engaged in a lifestyle that guaranteed a high degree of social isolation, not only from acquaintance, but also from the intimate family. Often the Type A males were work addicts, to the point where they grossly neglected their spouse and child(ren). 

In making this choice, it is well to look at the payoff we get from hanging on to the residuals of a painful experience. What are the satisfactions we are getting? How little are we willing to settle for? Anger. Hatred. Self-pity. Resentments. They all have their cheap little payoff, that little inner satisfaction. Let us not pretend that it is not there. There is a weird, quirky pleasure when you hang on to pain. It certainly satisfies the unconscious need for the alleviation of guilt through punishment. One gets to feel miserable and not rotten. The question then arises, “But for how long?” The true revolution of our times is the disappearance of friendship. Most of us are so far out of the habit of searching for friends and retaining them that we feel it awkward and painful to begin. However, there is nothing so satisfying as success in this regard, and nothing so basic to the problem of subduing the Type A’s free-floating hostility.  

The rise of human loneliness may be one of the most serious sources of cardiovascular disease in the twenty-first century. And yet, while it is easy enough to advise patients to seek out new friends and acquaintances, this simple advice is often difficult to obey. The reasons for this will be examined later. The acute social isolation and loneliness can, and indeed frequently do, exist even when an individual is married. Such marital break downs can be linked to the Type A personality and to the official development of cardiovascular disease. In order to completely understand the link between human loneliness, lack of love, and cardiac disease, it will be officially necessarily to differentiate the happily married from those who are unhappily married. One benefit from a life crisis is greater self-awareness. This situation is overwhelming, and we are forced to stop all of our diversionary games, take a good look at our life situation, and re-evaluate our beliefs, goals, values, and direction in life.  

In my research on psychosocial characteristics of 10,000 Swedish adult males before any symptoms of coronary heart disease had appeared, during the five years of observation, I noted that those men who mater had a myocardial infraction reported far more frequent dissatisfaction with their marital life. For example, men who reported that they felt a lack of emotional support from their spouses were far more likely to become heart attack victims. In a retrospective study, I found that patients with coronary heart disease reported a greater number of marital problems then did a control sample. The occurrence of marital problems and a sense of interpersonal rejection antedate a surprising number of acute myocardial infractions. Marital status and the lack of love has been linked to development of coronary heart disease.  

It appears that the individuals who are supported by love and a secure family and community bonds can cope much better with stressful psychological situations than individuals who are deprived of such support. When men who placed an inordinate emphasis on their work and therefore neglected their spouses and families were more likely to develop subsequent cardiac problems, and had a great deal of marital dissatisfaction, the subsequent myocardial infractions can be completely understood. There is, however, sufficient evidence now available for us to anticipate a connection between marital discord and the development of coronary heart disease and premature death. And even for single people, in a surprising number of cases of premature coronary disease and premature death, interpersonal unhappiness, the lack of love, and human loneliness seem to appear as root cases of the physical problems.  

I am most willing to go on psychological trips of one sort of another, confident that I can return to the illusion of the World concrete stability. With the approach to the soul of the World that follows, that illusion is take away, as the work of centuries to produce a World of God is exposed. Control will be possible. I am accompanied by an archetypal helpmate. This soul mate does not offer stability but functions as one through whom it becomes possible to enjoy instability and navigate in it, though not to control it. Through the reflective glass and the thin façade, we discover that such places cry to be clothed with soul. You might feel that the house provides the required soul place where rhythmic regeneration takes place, but houses now lack the same psychological roots in the Victorians of the past. It is left to the interpretation of the dream to restore the coherence which the dream-work has destroyed.