From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, an article on a new study showing that meditation can help ease lower back pain.
The study was done at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, which happens to have something it calls the mind/body/spirit psychological services program.
Dr. Barbara Nagrant, a clinical psychologist who runs the program, is quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as saying: "Healing involves mind, body and spirit."
She doesn't sound like one of those rebellious sorts that Anne Harrington is inclined to think mind-body medicine proponents are--people who actually do not want mind-body medicine accepted into the mainstream (see yesterday's post).
So let's just be clear that Professor Harrington aside, there are certainly a lot of real-life, experienced, open-minded people, even some within the mainstream medical community, who not only would like mind-body medicine to be more accepted by the mainstream, but are actively working towards that day.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Anne Harrington interviewed
Salon has an article on The Cure Within, and with it an interview with Anne Harrington.
She appears to approach the topic with a fair amount of open-mindedness; after all, she is writing about the history of mind-body medicine, not passing judgment. So something like is welcome and reasonable:
When do we find ourselves being tempted by or drawn to the other understandings of mind-body medicine? It's often when mainstream medicine lets us down or can't provide therapies. Often around chronic disorders, it doesn't seem to do justice to all the complex ways in which our diseases are more than just diseases, [in that] they're part of who we are. And we need to make sense of them as part of who we are.
I personally feel she's way off, however, with this:
I think part of it [mind-body medicine] will always remain by design and by desire outside of the mainstream because large parts of it want to be the face of medicine that defies what the mainstream says is possible. It wants to resist and rebel and offer alternatives. I think there would be huge disappointment if it were ever really embraced by the mainstream, because it would have ceased to be that rebellious other that people perhaps need.
No doubt this is true of some proponents of mind-body medicine but I feel it's a ridiculous generalization to make. Me, I yearn for this to become mainstream. I hate having to talk to doctors who make you feel like you're from Mars if you suggest that your emotional state is actually an important part of your physical reality. I want it to be mainstream because until it is, the truth of the mind-body connection remains far too underappreciated and misunderstood.
She appears to approach the topic with a fair amount of open-mindedness; after all, she is writing about the history of mind-body medicine, not passing judgment. So something like is welcome and reasonable:
When do we find ourselves being tempted by or drawn to the other understandings of mind-body medicine? It's often when mainstream medicine lets us down or can't provide therapies. Often around chronic disorders, it doesn't seem to do justice to all the complex ways in which our diseases are more than just diseases, [in that] they're part of who we are. And we need to make sense of them as part of who we are.
I personally feel she's way off, however, with this:
I think part of it [mind-body medicine] will always remain by design and by desire outside of the mainstream because large parts of it want to be the face of medicine that defies what the mainstream says is possible. It wants to resist and rebel and offer alternatives. I think there would be huge disappointment if it were ever really embraced by the mainstream, because it would have ceased to be that rebellious other that people perhaps need.
No doubt this is true of some proponents of mind-body medicine but I feel it's a ridiculous generalization to make. Me, I yearn for this to become mainstream. I hate having to talk to doctors who make you feel like you're from Mars if you suggest that your emotional state is actually an important part of your physical reality. I want it to be mainstream because until it is, the truth of the mind-body connection remains far too underappreciated and misunderstood.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
More on The Cure Within
So The Mind Body Blog has launched at the same time that a notable book about the history of mind-body medicine is being published, the previously noted The Cure Within. Serendipitous timing, says me.
The Christian Science Monitor reviews the book.
So does Slate. Get a load of the headline there: "The Psychosomatic Secret: The unscientific allure of mind-body medicine."
Note, for future reference, the noxious tendency of well-intentioned progressive thinkers to have an irrational faith in the power of rational thinking. Very quick they are to link anything that can't be measured quantitatively with that catch-all insult, "magical thinking." Their progressivism and humanity would be greatly assisted if they could let go of this unsupportable, insidious belief that everything that happens to us in every case is 100 percent reducible to chemistry and physics.
The Christian Science Monitor reviews the book.
So does Slate. Get a load of the headline there: "The Psychosomatic Secret: The unscientific allure of mind-body medicine."
Note, for future reference, the noxious tendency of well-intentioned progressive thinkers to have an irrational faith in the power of rational thinking. Very quick they are to link anything that can't be measured quantitatively with that catch-all insult, "magical thinking." Their progressivism and humanity would be greatly assisted if they could let go of this unsupportable, insidious belief that everything that happens to us in every case is 100 percent reducible to chemistry and physics.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
The Cure Within
The New York Times Book Review tomorrow offers an informed but narrow-minded review of The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine, by Harvard professor Anne Harrington. The reviewer is Jerome Groopman, a physician and a staff writer for The New Yorker.
The review concludes: "Harrington shows us that, whatever science reveals about the cause and course of disease, we will continue to tell ourselves stories, and try to use our own metaphors to find meaning in randomness."
Can't tell whether it's Groopman's or Harrington's bias on display right there: "to find meaning in randomness." The western approach is to deny meaning because western scientists cannot measure meaning. That's their perpetual mistake. The universe appears random when looking at it through filters that cannot perceive meaning.
The review concludes: "Harrington shows us that, whatever science reveals about the cause and course of disease, we will continue to tell ourselves stories, and try to use our own metaphors to find meaning in randomness."
Can't tell whether it's Groopman's or Harrington's bias on display right there: "to find meaning in randomness." The western approach is to deny meaning because western scientists cannot measure meaning. That's their perpetual mistake. The universe appears random when looking at it through filters that cannot perceive meaning.
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