The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine
by Anne Harrington
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Book Summary Information
Author: Anne HarringtonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-02-16
ISBN: 0393333973
Number of pages: 354
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Book Reviews of The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine
Book Review: Body is from Mars, Mind is from Venus
Summary: 5 Stars
My method for choosing books can be summed up by a single word: serendipity. I like to give chance a chance. To be true, I have my preferences. I like to read scholarly books in history, economics, social science, and international relations. But within these broad categories, I let myself be guided by personal whim and fortuitous encounters. A catchy title, an elegant book cover, or the blurbs by people I trust on the back jacket, can carry the day. I confess I am even sometimes influenced by Amazon reviews.
I had every reason not to pick up that book. The cover page, with the hand of a Buddha statue in a meditative position, evoked Eastern spirituality and esoteric rituals, things that leave me rather insensitive. The title reinforced that cautious impression, as The Cure Within could be construed either as a self-help manual or the tale of an inner journey, two categories I prefer to avoid. But here was the subtitle, A History of Mind-Body Medicine, which included two categories--history and medicine--that feature in my tag list. So I figured there was something for me in this book. I wasn't disappointed.
It is not easy to explain what this book is about. The expression "mind-body medicine" may not be familiar to all readers. It certainly wasn't for me. There is no obvious equivalent in my native language (I never heard of "la médecine du corps et de l'esprit"), and other terms that relate to the same field (psychosomatic medicine, behavioral medicine, holistic medicine, new age medicine, spiritual healing...) are either dated, limited to specialists, or code words for alternative practices only loosely related to medicine. As Anne Harrington explains, mind-body medicine is a rather new concept. Can there be a history of something that came only recently to existence, and which meaning has not yet solidified?
Mind-body medicine, a term that came into common parlance only in the 1990, is not a single approach to healing, but a recently constructed patchwork of quite distinct narrative traditions. It includes ancient Eastern healing practices, meditation, group therapy, the healing power of community, stress reduction, placebo healing, and various perspectives on the science behind it all. It has long been kept on the "kooky alternative margins of society": not so long ago, for a Harvard professor to commit oneself to studying the health benefits of meditation was considered a form of professional suicide. But it has since become more mainstream and gained center-stage attention, with many bestseller books and TV programs devoted to various aspects of the mind-body conundrum.
Anne Harrington doesn't waste much time explaining what her project is about. After a short introduction, where she explains what she means by stories and narratives, she enters the heart of the matter by investigating the power of suggestion throughout the ages. In the common modern narrative, the powers of suggestion depend on a Faustian bargain in which the patient yields her autonomy to an external authority, lays her trouble at his feet, and hopes to receive in return access to powers and experiences she could otherwise never hope to enjoy. On one side, this narrative draws on key elements within the centuries-old and now largely defunct narrative of demonic possession; on the other side, it draws just as heavily on the skepticism that has dogged possession and its successive secular analogues--first mesmerism, and then hypnosis--since at least the sixteenth century.
Already in 1598, the physician Michel Marescot proposed strict criteria to identify a case of possession as demonically inspired: being able to speak and understand languages of which the possessed person had no prior knowledge; being able to discern secrets and predict future events; demonstrating abnormal strength and insensitivity to pain; and consistently demonstrating revulsion at holy things such as contact with holy water, reading of Scripture, etc. But the very possibility of possession was later put in doubt (although the Catholic Church kept its exorcism rulebook practically unchanged until 1999). In the 1770s, the Viennese physician Anton Mesmer showed the same effects of exorcism over allegedly possessed persons could be produced simply waving hands over a patient's body, using "animal magnetism". A French royal commission pointed out in a secret annex to its report that some of the convulsions produced by mesmerism may have been sexual in nature--women were having orgasms under the close physical contact of the magnetizer.
As mesmerism gave way to magnetic somnambulism and then to hypnotism, the doctors soon got involved. Jean-Martin Charcot drew large audiences at La Salpêtrière by producing hysteric patients going through the discrete phases of catalepsy, lethargy, and somnambulism. Charcot's program was devastated when Hippolyte Bernheim showed he could reproduce all the symptoms and stages of major hysteria--and then proceed to change them or make them disappear, using suggestion. The last stage in the narrative on the power of suggestion is the codification of the placebo effect, which comes from the sheer authority of medicine and the comforting rituals of its practice, and that randomized controlled trials isolate--using placebo groups--in order to neutralize its effect upon the testing of a new medication.
This is, in short, the plotline of the first chapter ("The Power of Suggestion"). It was such a tour de force that I doubted the tempo could be maintained. But the second chapter ("The Body That Speaks"), and the following ones, kept this rapid pace of trailblazing analysis. Each chapter begins with the presentation of what the author calls a narrative, which provides us with a template and linguistic tropes that help us understand the larger meaning of specific stories we hear, read, or encounter in daily life. Many of these narratives have strong historical origins in the Christian tradition, as when Jesus' comment that "your faith has saved you" is used to illustrate the power of positive thinking. Particular attention is paid to the birth of psychoanalysis as a therapeutic discipline, but many other examples are drawn from the history of medicine, from psychology, and from the experimental sciences. The different pieces of the puzzle are drawn together at the end to make sense of the healing practices that have recently coalesced under the heading of mind-body medicine.
Here is how the author recaps her argument: "Today's mind-body medicine offers resources for proponents of doctor-led rituals who may also be skeptical of patients' own abilities to control and make sense of their own experiences ("The Power of Suggestion"); for those who believe in the healing power of the examined life ("The Body That Speaks"); for advocates of patient-initiated practices and those most skeptical of medicine's arrogance ("The Power of Positive Thinking"); for those most committed to the power of modern laboratory science to crack the secrets of the mind-body connection ("Broken by Modern Life"); and for those who are drawn to both the more folksy and homegrown ("Healing Ties") and the more exotic and romantic ("Eastward Journeys") form of medical, social, and moral redemption."
In my opinion, this is how popular history of science should be written. The text doesn't follow a conventional plotline, and is indeed quite experimental in style. Each chapter echoes each other and develops upon where the previous has left. The narratives create a patchwork of vignettes that help people make sense of everyday experience. It is very easy to get used to this non-linear plot, and history comes alive in the lively episodes of medical practice or experimental research that are exhumed from oblivion. This book also shows the direction that science studies should aim at. Social science approaches should not be antagonistic to science--as in the "science war" episodes, on which much ink has been spilled. As mind and body are made inseparable from each other in mind-body medicine, the author takes aim at the "two-cultures" approaches to knowledge, the same approach that puts the humanities buildings and the science laboratories on opposite sides of a university's campus. In fact, as many episodes in the book demonstrate, science has never been disenchanted, and popular books have always blended scientific knowledge with stories and lessons gained from everyday experience. Science studies can help scientists to interpret their science better and, through that effort, help us find "alternatives to our fractured approaches to our humanness".
Summary of The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine
"A splendid history of mind-body medicine...a book that desperately needed to be written."?Jerome Groopman, New York Times
Is stress a deadly disease on the rise in modern society? Can mind-body practices from the East help us become well? When it comes to healing, we believe we must look beyond doctors and drugs; we must look within ourselves. Faith, relationships, and attitude matter.
But why do we believe such things? From psychoanalysis to the placebo effect to meditation, this vibrant cultural history describes mind-body healing as rooted in a patchwork of stories, allowing us to make new sense of our suffering and to rationalize new treatments and lifestyles.
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