Thomas Moore gets it

"I’m tempted to say that every illness is primarily a soul malady and only secondarily a physical problem. In sickness, the soul comes into the foreground. It asks for attention. If its wounds are addressed, then perhaps the physical manifestations will no longer be necessary. But care of the soul is not a surface activity; nor is it easy. It demands that you finally confront yourself and decide to live fully rather than halfheartedly. It asks that you learn to love with your whole heart and get over any self-pity or cynicism that may still remain in your heart. It asks that you transcend yourself in genuine concern for others and in a feeling of community that knows no boundaries. This is not an easy task, but it is the only way, finally, to health."
- Thomas Moore, Dark Nights of the Soul

Dr. Robert Bazell on MSNBC

In "Mind-body medicine needs a check-up," posted today on MSNBC, Dr. Robert Bazell writes skeptically of the burgeoning field of alternative and complementary medicine. There is always plenty to be skeptical about, to be sure. Charlatans and quacks proliferate in the area of alternative medicine precisely because there is so little regulation and accepted certification. You can't simply say you're a medical doctor and begin practicing (well, you can, but you can be arrested for such things). In alternative medicine, you can do lots of things without any meaningful certification.

That said, Bazell is too high and mighty for his--or our--own good. While his language allows for the existence of creditable and helpful alternative medical practitioners, his arguments proceed as if they don't exist:

"As I have written before, many practitioners of alternative medicine either see no need for their claims to be tested with scientific studies, or simply ignore results if they don't like they way come out."

Ah, yes: "many"--not a very scientific assertion there, Dr. Bazell. This leaves the distinct possibility that "many" others do exactly the opposite and are actually helpful healers. But he can overlook that to imply, in a number of different ways, that the entire field is suspect precisely because traditional Western medical practice does not accept it.

As for ignoring results if they don't like the way they come out, alternative medical providers have not cornered the market on that particular attitude by any means. Western medical doctors likewise do this all the time--a fact that, I should note, routinely keeps alternative types of knowledge and understanding from getting anywhere in the traditional medical world. Take, for example, all the studies that have been done that show that back pain is by and large not dependent upon physical conditions. And then look at all the back pain clinics that are set up around the country, by good old accredited medical doctors, and tell me (or tell Dr. Bazell) that these doctors are not simply ignoring results that they don't like.

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.

Conscious Entities

A site "devoted to short discussions of some of the major thinkers and theories about consciousness."

Friendly, informative, and fascinating, the site is enhanced by its uncluttered and amiable design. Anyone interested in mind-body interaction has ultimately to tackle the concept of consciousness, and this modest site is a great starting point.

The Mind Body Awareness Project

Sickened by a horrific, random act of violence here in Philadelphia this week, I found myself wondering about the effect on the body of being relentlessly exposed to violent images, as so many people are simply by watching TV and movies in the 21st century. I was thinking that surely this exposure via the mind has ancillary effects not only on behavior but on the body itself somehow.

I did some quick Googling and discovered something called The Mind Body Awareness Project. While this organization does not relate directly to my question, it turns out to relate very directly to my tragic inspiration. The Mind Body Awareness Project "is a non-profit organization dedicated to teaching essential life skills to at-risk youth through the practices of meditation and yoga," according to the site.

What happened here the other day was this. Four teenagers attacked a man at a subway station for this reason: they had nothing to do, and just thought they'd go beat this guy up. Turns out he died of a stress-induced asthma seizure. The man was in his late 30s; he was a mild-mannered, hard-working Starbucks employee. Life ended by four young men who would've been called "droogs" in A Clockwork Orange; Anthony Burgess may have had no idea how realistic his dystopian masterpiece might turn out to be. We have raised a sub-species of human being within our midst and I can't believe that the violence we strew so casually throughout our entertainment is unrelated to the existence of people who seem to have had their humanity removed when it comes to the casual use of exceptional violence.

At the same time, I know for a fact there are groups of very good and very helpful people in the world--for instance, the folks behind the Mind Body Awareness Project. Had they been working with the kids who committed this stupid, senseless crime, one man would have been spared a frightening and pointless death.

The incident like the one I've described saddens me to my core, but it does not leave me defeated. We can and must do better than this. Think about the violence you expose yourself to and ask yourself if you can do better than that.

Newsweek on the placebo effect

Here's another mainstream media take on placebos. Sharon Begley acknowledges from the outset how resistant both doctors and patients can be about the very concept of the placebo effect. Then she writes:

"But the fact remains that placebos are at least somewhat effective and sometimes very effective for some patients. Rather than railing against that finding or pretending it doesn't exist, what we should be doing is learning how brain activity that corresponds to the expectation of cure translates into clinical improvement."

I remain rather flabbergasted that so many people would rather ignore evidence that placebos often work than figure out what exactly is going on. How odd that the doctors who require clinical evidence before drawing conclusions on treatment will nevertheless overlook or disavow knowledge of clinical evidence that has proven, over and over, that placebos can and do work under many circumstances. So it's not clinical proof they really want; what they really want, like so many of us, is to have their own preconceived ideas to be continually affirmed.

Friday quotation (on a Sunday)

"What an abyss of uncertainty, whenever the mind feels overtaken by itself; when it, the seeker, is at the same time the dark region through which it must go seeking and where all its equipment will avail it nothing."
- Marcel Proust, Swann's Way