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For over two millennia astrology and medicine were interrelated aetiological pursuits: the vocation of the astrologer paralleled that of the physician, since both investigated the causes of the emergence of signs (symptoms). In early modern England, the critical importance of astrology to medicine is highlighted by its deployment in a range of practices: those of astrologers, physicians, surgeons and various 'irregulars'. Yet only a minority, the astrologers, were skilled in the complex methodologies of the Astrological Figure ('horoscope'). An important dimension of medical practice, these vitally important Figures have not been scrutinised, nor the astrological literature in which they appear. Existing studies have described the processes of an astrologer's practice but have failed to invoke the Figure to explain them. Valuable questions have been asked, but they are no longer the only questions. Rather, they constitute points of entry into new aspects of medical research and a set of more complex processes. Invoking a technically informed understanding of astrology, this thesis represents the first scholarly attempt to explore astrology and its application to medical matters. Opening brand new terrain in terms of innovative methodological approach and interrogation of material, this thesis recovers astrological-medical information not to be found in any other source. Divided into two parts: Part One examines astrological-medical knowledge and methodology, important on its own terms and in relationship to the author. Part Two examines astrological-medical practice, its organisation, routines, rituals, encounters and processes. Restating the astrological model of healthcare in terms of the Figure, rather than a patient centred Galenic model, this thesis moves away from 'natural/judicial' classifications and anachronistic views of astrology as a system of unfounded 'superstitious', 'irrational' ideas and 'crackpot' practitioners. By incorporating astrology into historical-medical discourse a broader conception of medical practice is revealed, as well as an insight into the complexity and richness of medical provision.

The thought suppression literature (Wegner et al. 1987; Wegner and Erber, 1992) illustrates that there are secondary costs of suppressing the cognitive content of conscious experience. A 'thought rebound' effect has been demonstrated in both healthy populations and psychopathology (Purdon, 1999), whereby the harder a thought is pushed out of mind the more likely it is to subsequently return. It is increasingly realised that people try to control affect as well as cognitions (Gross, 1998; 2001), but as yet the secondary consequences of different forms of emotion regulation have not been studied in detail. In particular, whether an 'emotional rebound' effect occurs following suppression of emotions rather than thoughts during processing of distressing material has not been investigated. 'Emotional rebound' could potentially help explain some of the secondary symptoms seen in PTSD and related conditions. This thesis examines the concurrent and subsequent impact of attempting to suppress (both internally experienced and externally expressed) emotion while processing traumatic information, and is intended as a preliminary investigation of whether emotion suppression contributes to PTSD. Healthy participants were asked to watch a video trauma induction, either under emotional suppression (n = 21) or control (n = 23) conditions. The consequences of emotional suppression on mood, emotional response to novel material, episodic memory, and occurrence of intrusive memories were then measured, using both self-report and psychophysiological methods. Results found that emotional suppression did not alter self-reported emotional experience, lead to a more variable heart response, and did not change electrodermal response while watching the trauma induction. This suggests that emotional suppression is a largely ineffective way of regulating emotional experience and that it alters psychophysiological activity, although exactly what the change in heart rate means at a psychological level is unclear. Subsequently, emotional suppression impaired free recall but not recognition memory of the trauma material, suggesting there is a slight mnemonic impact of this form of affect regulation. There was also a trend for suppression to lead to a reduction in the experience of intrusive memories about the trauma content, although this did not reach statistical significance. There was no change in self-reported experience of emotion following suppression, either in terms of background mood or when processing novel emotional material. There was, however, an increased heart rate deceleration when viewing subsequent emotional material and a slight increase in depression scores at one week follow-up, perhaps indicative of ongoing emotional costs of suppression. These findings, replicating and extending work from the normative emotion regulation literature (Gross, 1998; 2001), suggest that emotional suppression is not an effective form of emotion regulation at the time of encoding and that it leads to some subsequent emotional and mnemonic changes. A provisional clinical implication is that clients should perhaps be discouraged from using emotional suppression as form of mood control. In terms of understanding PTSD, it seems plausible to tentatively suggest that emotional suppression could contribute to the hyper-arousal and impaired recall of trauma seen in PTSD. It is important, however, to replicate and extend these findings to clinical populations to support these conclusions. While emotional suppression has been found not to lead to a 'rebound' effect directly analogous to that seen following thought suppression, it does appear to have some unexpected secondary costs that could perhaps contribute to symptoms of PTSD.

This thesis aims to explore the interaction of mental-state and body-state representation in depression, hypothesising that the body is hypo-responsive and poorly monitored in depression. This leads to difficulty making intuitive decisions and blunting of emotional experience. A battery of neuropsychological tasks was developed, measuring emotional response to affective images, intuitive decision-making, probabilistic decision-making, mental-state monitoring and body-state monitoring and these measures were combined with psychophysiological recording of galvanic skin response and heart period response. These tasks wee administered to analogue and clinically depressed samples, to assess how information processing varies with the severity of depressive symptoms. A comparison of baseline activity in the periphery revealed that clinical depression led to a reduction in GSR whereas analogue depression led to an elevation in GSR. There were no differences in heart period response. Both the analogue and clinical samples showed a reduction in the experience of happiness to emotional images but no change in sadness. Emotional changes were to some extent related to abnormalities in body-state response, but these abnormalities were insufficient to fully differentiate between emotional states. The analogue sample was impaired at intuitive decision-making situations of uncertainty but intact on probabilistic reasoning in situations of certainty, whereas the clinical sample performed normally on both tasks. Body-state change was loosely linked to task performance but not in the way current theories suggest. An attempt to validate the somatic-marker hypothesis of decision-making (Damasio, 1994) offered very little support for the current formulation of how body-state influences reasoning. Both the analogue and clinical samples showed superior awareness of mental-state. The analogue sample was impaired in body-state monitoring; the clinical sample showed elevated subjective awareness of body-state and normal body-state monitoring performance.