Biological repair men or healers? Our over burdened doctors

"Doctors are not merely biological repair men, people who know how we work and people who can twiddle knobs or replace faulty parts when they threaten to go wrong. A doctor must be a healer in the fullest, most spiritual sense, someone who accepts that human beings are congenitally lonely and dissatisfied but who may be able to reconcile them to the difficulties of their condition...to share the journey [of pain or anxiety or grief] with the patient." (1)

The renowned Austrian Psychiatrist Viktor E Frankl survived four different concentration camps, including Auschwitz, during the holocaust. ‘Man lives in three dimensions,’ he wrote, ‘the somatic, the mental and the spiritual. The spiritual dimension cannot be ignored, for it is what makes us human.’ (2)

The early links between spirituality and healthcare in the history of American medicine were just about abandoned entirely with the Flexner Report of 1910. It was not until the 1960s that any links between spirituality, religion and healthcare began to re-emerge, primarily it would seem driven by the charismatic movement and the neo Pentecostalism churches.

the chapel at the Burrswood Christian Healing Hospital

But the movement to bring the soul back into medicine had started in the 1950s with psychiatrists such as Jung and Rogers, together with the work of Methodist Minister Leslie Weatherhead. Real growth in this field, however, really only came about in the late 1980s and the 1990s and started with what is probably the most famous experiment of all on the healing power of prayer. In 1988 Byrd, a cardiologist at the San Francisco General Hospital and also a devout Christian was struck by a conversation with a colleague about a terminally ill cancer patient. All medical avenues had been exhausted and the physicians really did not know what else they could do for the patient. We could try prayer, said Byrd (3). Thus began the prayer study that has inspired so many subsequent experiments into non -local healing phenomena, but at the same time has been ridiculed by many. The scientifically designed and double blind trials produced more positive responses in those groups of patients who were prayed for, when compared with the control groups. Although the sample was small and the statistical interpretation of the results controversial, there have been many more studies since then that have corroborated in different ways the principal of that pioneer experiment; non local intervention such as prayer can give a positive outcome. Byrd’s work certainly proved to be a catalyst for physicians such as Dossey who was interested in exploring the spiritual questions of medicine within wider parameters beyond the known interaction of mind and body.

The Burrswood Christian Healing Hospital 

In a paper published by the Fetzer Institute in 1993 David Aldridge noted the need to ‘recognize that patience, grace, prayer, meditation, hope, forgiveness and fellowship are as important to many of our health initiatives as medication, hospitalization, incarceration or surgery.' (4)

As I look around and see our overburdened health services and our seeming reliance on drugs and new technology, have we made very much progress in 2014? 


References:
(1) from Kaptchuk, Ted and Michael Croucher, The Healing Arts, BBC Publications, 1986, pp. 26, 37, cited in Michael Mayne, A Year Lost and Found, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1987, p. 38.

(2) Viktor Frankl, (1905 to 1997), 1973, p.16, latest edition, Souvenir Press Ltd (April 19, 2004). A 2008 Kindle edition is also available.

(3) Story related by Larry Dossey, in his Reinventing Medicine: Beyond Mind-Body to a New Era of Healing, Shaftesbury, Dorset, Boston, Massachusetts: Element Books, 2000, p. 53 et. seq. followed by his critical analysis of non local studies and positive responses obtained from non local prayer and healing intentions.

(4) Aldridge, David, Is There Evidence for Spiritual Healing? Advances 9(4): 4(1993) cited in Michael Lerner, Choices in Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Approaches to Cancer, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: MIT Press, 1996, Chapter 9 p. 135: an excellent and comprehensive textbook in this field.

Protecting our children from internet porn - and our personal responsibilities

Surely most parents are concerned at what their children may be able to access on the Internet? 

But it seems that we may be moving towards an Internet where parents have to opt in to "adult content" to receive it, when they sign up for a broadband contract, otherwise it will be blocked. The situation is complicated and varies from country to country, and in the US from State to State. But this is what the UK government want to do. At the moment they have the reverse situation - it is up to parents to block what their children can access on the Internet, otherwise everything is available. But it seems that 4 out of 10 parents are not protecting their children from this content - therefore, the argument goes, it is better to have an "opt in" system instead.
Then we have the inevitable debates about who should hold the responsibility here and people start grumbling about "nanny states."

In an ideal world, individuals should take personal responsibility - of course they should. But it seems they don't. And as I know from discussions around my own first book, which urges us all to take responsibility for this world before it is too late, people don't seem very good at taking that responsibility for what is "right." What is more they don't like receiving any advice, however well meant, on what perhaps they should be doing; how they should be behaving.

So it seems we need the State to protect us from ourselves. Is that right? Overzealous legislation can be dangerous in itself. It can take away from us our individual sense of ethical, spiritual and social responsibility.

We have personal responsibilities towards ourselves, towards each other, towards our communities, our nations and ultimately to our living planet earth Gaia. And of course legislation fails to address our underlying behavioral problems, our selfishness and aggression, our greed and our envy, the seemingly prevalent albeit petty dishonesty among so many of us. Such behavior can cause even the normally law-abiding citizens among us to sometimes ignore the rules and regulations. Simple examples are the widely disregarded restrictions on speeding and the use of a hand held cellular while driving. Such behavior is obviously selfish. It exposes our fellow road users, pedestrians, cyclists, horses, pets, wild life and other vehicles to mortal danger. Why do we do it? Would we change our driving behavior if we knew that every other user on the roads around us was a cherished friend or relation? Of course we would! At least I hope we would! If we always drove with consideration and care and indeed love for every other person sharing the road with us, traffic regulations would not be needed at all. How totally unrealistic given human nature!

 ‘What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility,’ said President Obama in his inauguration speech, ‘a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task. 

Viktor Frankl observed that ‘Being human means being conscious and being responsible.’ He was writing about the very core of our being, our human conscience, and our personal integrity.

The state of being responsible is to be ‘liable to be called to account,’ or to render satisfaction, or to be answerable to someone for something. Isn't it now time for each and every one of us to realize that we must bear our own share of responsibility in the shaping of our world, and then turn that realization into action?

In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama emphasized that responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to do a particular job. It lies with each of us individually. 


The next day in his Nobel Peace Prize lecture he elaborated on the theme: "The realisation that we are all basically the same human beings, who seek happiness and try to avoid suffering, is very helpful in developing a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood; a warm feeling of love and compassion for others. This, in turn, is essential if we are to survive in this ever shrinking world we live in. For if we each selfishly pursue only what we believe to be in our own interest, without caring about the needs of others, we not only may end up harming others but also ourselves. This fact has become very clear during the course of this century. We know that to wage a nuclear war today, for example, would be a form of suicide; or that by polluting the air or the oceans, in order to achieve some short-term benefit, we are destroying the very basis for our survival. As interdependents, therefore, we have no other choice than to develop what I call a sense of universal responsibility."

 And what about the people who create the porn? 

American eco-poet and Zen Buddhist Gary Snyder once wrote that no matter whom we are and what we do in our lives, we need to

‘Find [our] place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there.’ 

So let's do it!