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Excerpt
Information and speculation about healing practices are customarily relegated to the realm of applied behavioral science. Actually, as attempts to promote healing through transforming meanings of illness, they fit more comfortably into the realms of literature, religion, and the like. To evaluate them appropriately, we must recognize that they are not scientific; that is, following terminology of Karl Popper, they are not falsifiable. One cannot ask of them whether they are true or false in a literal sense. It makes no sense to ask whether, for example, Tolstoy's War and Peace, Milton's Paradise Lost, or, for that matter, Freudian psychoanalysis, is true. Their persuasive power lies in their imagination-catching and emotion-evoking use of literary tropes such as metaphors, images, and the like to illuminate the human condition.
Similarly, psychological healing rationales and methods have immense power to alleviate human suffering and to promote a sense of well-being through a healing partnership between one or more sufferers and healers, through which the latter transforms the meaning of the former's suffering from discouraging to hopeful. An illness may be depressing to the point of suicide, or inspiring and morale-enhancing, depending on its meaning or interpretation.
The "new" medicine, which this book so ably surveys, is based on traditional folk remedies and practices conducted primarily by nonphysician clinicians and primary care physicians, using herbs, incantations, rituals, and so forth, designed to enhance the sufferer's hopes and reinforce ties with his or her group. These are in response to a growing widespread need not met by impersonal HMOs and the like. That this need continues to be felt is evidenced by a recent mail survey of courses in complementary or alternative medicine in 125 medical schools (Cooper et al., 1998). Through the use of these myriad healing rituals and practices, humans have sought to keep at bay the endless array of disabilities that has plagued humanity since time immemorial.
This book, written by a Harvard-trained physician who worked for years as a researcher in the National Institute of Mental Health, provides an admirable introduction to this vitally important, conceptually amorphous field. It provides an excellent exposition of the basic aspects of healing, including not only the ones grounded in science, but also those in the realm of religion, such as forms of meditation and prayer. It is couched in an easy, flowing, clear style, free of jargon. It is vividly illustrated by the author's rich clinical experiences, including submitting himself to treatments and exercises outside the realm of conventional treatments, but widely supported by the cultures in which they are embedded. These remedies include meditation, both tranquilizing and "chaotic," t'ai chi, Indian Ayurvedic medicine, herbal remedies, and healthful diets. The remedies, widely used in every society including our own, are new only to those who remain wilfully ignorant of them.
In short, like the proverbial fiddler on the roof, an intellectually adventurous reader is compensated for the unsteadiness of his perch by gaining a new perspective on the landscape below.
