More on The Cure Within

A little late with this one, but: the Chicago Tribune offered a quick overview of The Cure Within in late February, and a nice Anne Harrington interview. The headline alone displayed an unusual sensitivity to nuance for mainstream media coverage of the mind-body connection, however prosaically expressed: "The mind can heal or cripple the body." Ah! At last, a little less of either extreme that tends to dominate when mainstream publications write about this. Usually you get either breathlessness (see Parade: "Thoughts Can Heal Your Body") or sniping skepticism (see Slate: "The Psychosomatic Secret: The Unscientific Allure of Mind-Body Medicine").

The more thorough fact of the matter is that the mind and the body have an ongoing, complex sort of interaction. Your thoughts and emotions can either help you or hurt you, both psychologically and physiologically, and often unconsciously.

I am now by the way in the middle of reading The Cure Within myself. Although I'm having a hard time feeling warm and fuzzy about Harrington's distinctly postmodern organizational framework, the book is relentlessly interesting, informative, and, even, entertaining.