INTRODUCTION
Ernest Becker has commented that we need a new science of the human that is oriented towards the centrality of death and that is capable of synthesizing psychology and mythico-religious experiences. "Mythico-religious experience" refers to the symbolic realm of myth, symbol and ritual which is where the human search for ultimate meaning is carried out. Becker was advocating an alternative paradigm, a new "map" to guide the study of the human life. He noticed like others before and after him that science fell short of inspiring deeper answers and healing in times of distress and loss. For Becker, a form of spiritual experience was vital to any new perspective on health. Such a perspective would have to address the human longing to transcend mortality and boundary. Transcendence, as Becker noted, always occurs on a symbolic dimension through the power of myth and a "religious" perspective. Our lives are fragile. We live suspended by rather precarious threads. The balance of life we have remaining is always in jeopardy. Human life is marked by limits, finitude and powerlessness. We all have biological bodies which are linked to the laws of nature. Death is the ultimate, grave and constant reality for all of us. Faced with the inevitability of death we long for meaning and fulfillment. We consciously or unconsciously seek to transcend the limits we encounter. This urge to transcend has been referred to as the drive for symbolic immortality. Various authors have studied this phenomenon including Otto Rank, Ernest Becker, Robert Jay Lifton, Ira Progoff and others. Symbolic immortality is central to human motivation. It is our deepest longing--to live forever.
Similar to Becker, Robert Jay Lifton called for a new paradigm or "map" over a decade ago. Lifton studied people around the world as they confronted pain, suffering and the threat of death. He described their inevitable and recurrent responses. These groups, as they struggled with limits and boundaries, all displayed common and shared themes. Lifton refers to this as a survivor syndrome. Whether it was veterans of the Vietnam war, bomb victims from Hiroshima or persons persecuted during the Chinese cultural revolution, certain patterns emerged. All desperately sought transcendence through myth in pursuit of symbolic immortality.
Out of his extensive psychohistorical research Lifton devised the contours of a new science of the Self. The formative-symbolic imagination and human spirituality were central to Lifton's project for a new science. The symbolic imagination is viewed by Lifton as formative. It guides, reveals and instructs human life. It gives form to our lifestyle and world view. Through the power of myth and symbol human life is given meaning and direction. Our deeper aspirations are addressed through mythic-symbolic processes.
Lifton called for this new science to acknowledge and reaffirm the human experience of transcendence and quest for meaning. We interpret and adapt Lifton's beckon call, to mean a reaffirmation of spirituality. As you will see later, our ideas on spirituality are fairly generic or ecumenical, and are not limited to certain religious beliefs or approaches. Spirituality is the basic human struggle to overcome limit and give meaning and form to life.
Lifton's model is an expanded paradigm where the human is given permission to engage in the symbolic pursuit of immortal beliefs. These beliefs reside in the myths and symbols of culture and are processed by what he calls the mythic-formative zone of the Self. In this zone the life of the self, along with its powers of symbolic imagination, guide human existence in its basic task: the search and affirmation of meaning. Meaning is sought after on both proximate and ultimate levels.
On the proximate level the imagination aids in practical and functional problem solving and decision making. On the ultimate level issues of spirituality and transcendence are pursued. Both levels are indispensable. Both levels are integral to the human's pursuit of meaning. The proximate or functional cannot be minimized. We need to survive and make meaningful choices to guide our daily lives. Similarly, we cannot minimize the ultimate dimensions. Our lives need meaningful answers to our deeper questions. To consciously deny the ultimate dimension only leads to the pushing underground of this divine realm. There, ultimate strivings pushed below the surface linger in the shadows of the unconscious.
Lifton reclaims the problem of meaning and transcendence as a legitimate concern. He also redirects the sights of science towards the symbolic. He comments that "matters of what Paul Tillich called `ultimate concern' come as much under the purview of science--that is science broadly defined--as do any other manifestations of the human mind." This is a radical move. So much of science rejects the realm of ultimate meaning as illogical, irrational and irrelevant. Lifton's ideas are important but our adaptation of his work differs from his primary intentions. He was not primarily interested in what we are: authentic spirituality as a means of transcendence in times of human suffering. His mission was to expand the purview of science and to integrate a new formative symbolic model of the psychological self. We think this however, is an important and necessary step to establishing a scientific understanding of spirituality and transcendence. For these reasons, we will refer extensively to his writings.
In modern science, the symbolic dimension of life has been relegated to a minor concern. What is of major concern to modern science is a mistaken emphasis on the "real." The symbolic has been banished as secondary, as too soft or "messy." It is only given limited recognition in the worlds of art and religion. Scientists concern themselves with the hard and the real. This is the world of facts, natural laws, experimentation and measurement. Nowhere is this more apparent than in modern techno-medicine. Even in psychiatry medicalization and a strict scientific approach has become dominant. Given these trends Lifton's work is all the more relevant and timely. Lifton reasserts the important role of mythic-symbolic imagination and transcendence.
In this book we continue the project that Lifton started over a decade ago. We offer further differentiation of his model. We seek to expand, extend and contribute to the evolving contours of a new paradigm. Our goals are similar to Becker, Lifton and others: we aim to contribute to the expansion of the realm of the human sciences. Human formation is guided by myths and symbols in the essential quest for meaning. Spirituality, myth and symbol are seen as occupying an important role in the realms of health and medicine. Central to our project is an extended view of the human with an emphasis of the processes of symbolization.
The enlarged view of the human offered in this book is based upon a formative-symbolic perspective. Human life is given form through the essential processes of symbolization. In addition, we extend our vision of the human to four dimensions. We view the total human as the interaction between four poles. We will call this an ecological field model or four dimensional model. The four dimensions or poles are: 1. the subjective (personal feelings, memories, uniqueness); 2. the social (institutions, family, relationships, community); 3. the divine (spirituality, ultimate meanings, transcendence); 4. the natural (body, nature, genetic code).
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We are dealing with issues and concepts that are difficult even for the academic. This is especially so because many of these concepts are counter-intuitive. We have made every attempt to present these ideas of human health in the simplest possible way. We have, at the same time, made efforts to indicate throughout the book where our ideas have come from. No scientist theorizes out of a vacuum. While the lay reader may not care whose shoulders we are standing upon the academic reader demands this knowledge.
For our understanding of the symbolic self we turn to the early works of psychoanalysis culminating in the ideas of Otto Rank. Rank's ideas on the vital importance of "immortality ideologies" and the need to move beyond a individualistic, rational psychology are central to our project. For Rank, what was of primary importance to human life was the realm of symbolic belief and an understanding of an expanded model of the human. The expanded model of the human was an attempt by Rank to go beyond subjective and rational factors to cultural, social and non-rational spiritual dimensions in human life.
The holistic depth psychology of Ira Progoff serves to expand our view of the human. We have found Progoff's work in holism and the depth processes of the unconscious to be invaluable. Progoff understood psychology as a search for meaning. In his view, psychological health always aims for balance and dialogue between the multiple dimensions of our inner and outer worlds. His use of process meditation and spiritual disciplines in psychological work is important. Progoff's Intensive Journal is a major tool for human integration and health.
Lifton's The Life of the Self, as previously mentioned, has served as a foundation for our formative-symbolic model of meaning and balance in health. Our view of health as a search for meaning is analogous to Lifton's view on human life as search for form. For Lifton, "form" and "formative-symbolic" were key concepts in his new paradigm. Form, according to Lifton, was related to meaning. Psychological health was synonymous with intact form or the connection to vital, symbolic meaning.
In the field of religion, philosophy and spirituality we are indebted to Eric Voegelin, William Thompson, and Adrian van Kaam. We are also influenced by hermeneutics and particularly the post-Heideggerian work of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur. This group of thinkers is in consensus on the need for a broader view of the human. The human is more than isolated subjectivity or biological functioning. The human is embedded in a field comprised of social, biological, subjective and spiritual elements.
William Thompson's application of Eric Voegelin's quaternary or four-dimensional structure of the human is the foundation for our field model. For Thompson (as for Voegelin) the basic disposition of human being revolves around four inter-related axis: the Divine, Society, Nature, and the Self. As Thompson notes, the primacy of this four dimensional structure of human existence is ancient and in many ways empirically self-evident. As far back as Plato and more recently in the work of Eric Voegelin and Adrian van Kaam something similar to this field model has been discussed.
Voegelin's exhaustive study of world history led him to conclude that this four pole model was irreducible and fundamental. "Metaxis" became Voegelin's central organizing principle. Metaxis involved a constant and delicate search for balance between the four dimensions of the human world. Human life, history, and civilization could be understood in terms of the four pole field and the search for metaxis.
Recently, the works of van Kaam in Formative Spirituality have displayed an eloquent and persuasive field model of the human. Gadamer and Ricoeur both develop conceptions of the human which are compatible with the field paradigm. Quantum physics with its relational-field model of matter is also consistent with the field model of the human.
An important understanding of the four pole field model is its dialogical and dynamic inter-relatedness, and its essential orientation towards transcendence. As Thompson notes, "the poles are inter-related, so that oscillations in any one of the poles seem to reverberate upon the others." He goes on to add that "if something will be askew in one of the poles, the probability is that something will be askew in the other poles too. Conversely, healthiness, in one of the poles will contribute toward healthiness of all of the poles." For all of these thinkers an essential reality is of the human as a spiritual being that is motivated towards transcendence. The human-as-field is always in pursuit of transcendent meaning and vitality.
We have chosen the concept of recovery and metaxis to ground our approach to health and healing in the human-as-field. Recovery is a metaphor descriptive of re-awakening and re-vitalizing the experience of symbolic meaning. Recovery is the guiding image of the creative artist, the mystic or the mythological hero in search of the "Holy Grail." In reference to human disease it refers to the recovery of formative-symbolic vitality and meaning.
Metaxis originally came from Plato. It basically means "balance." For Plato, metaxy--the balance in between the human material world and the non-empirical Mystery or Beyond--was crucial to health and fulfillment. We use it to indicate that human life is always a search for the proper balance or metaxy between the multiple dimensions of our being. We do not view the human as an independent isolated entity. Instead, we view the human as a field of dynamic interactions between the four poles. Metaxis indicates the necessity for the proper balance between these poles of the field.
Metaxis refers to harmony or ecological balance in the four pole field. Human existence is lived out through dialogical relations. Relationships between all dimensions of the ecological field must be balanced. The most important balance is between the secular and transcendent dimensions. This is the balance between the mystery beyond and the empirical human world.
The connection to transcendence and meaning is made through the mythic-symbolic realm. The human-as-ecological-field and as spiritual being is embedded in a symbolic order. The myths and symbols of culture are the vital building blocks of health and well-being. Much of our discussion of healing and health will necessarily involve the centrality of mythic-symbolic language and symbolization. Recovery and metaxis in reference to illness and healing are grounded in symbolic connections and movements.
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As described above, we have developed a four pole, field model to understand human health. The total human is understood as a field, suspended between four dynamic and inter-related dimensions. These poles are not merely fixed sets of events or realities.
The processes of the self aim to balance the human within these dimensions. We use concepts from the field of ecology to describe the inter-relatedness of the four dimensions. Ecology studies the balance of the natural world, its many dimensions and the unique niches that organisms come to occupy. Adaptation is central to the ecological field. Through a process of ecological balance the organism adapts to the environment.
In addition, we use Lifton's concepts of connection, integration, and movement to describe our field. The human seeks to maintain an ecological balance through connection, integration and movement. These concepts originate in the subjective pole and are processes of the self. The self here is the central, unifying and integrating agent of subjective experience. They will be discussed in several places throughout the book.
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While each pole is mainly determined there is always potential and possibility for change. Each pole is predominantly "fixed," yet through the powers of the symbolic imagination there are seeds of some freedom and possibility. The natural pole is, for example, largely determined by our genetic codes. Yet we can alter our biological fates by attitudes and lifestyle. Choices such as sound nutrition, exercise and balanced lifestyles can enhance our natural health. On the other hand, we can abuse our bodies with extremes of stress, food and addictive substances thereby worsening our health.
In the spiritual dimension we inherit certain beliefs from our families and social situations. These serve to limit or "determine" our divine pole. Yet we can choose to pursue new beliefs or alter our religious styles. In a similar manner, we are born into a certain social class with fixed political and economic consequences. These are difficult to change. Yet we can alter our social fates by choices. We can choose a new attitude or change our priorities. We can choose simplicity and material sufficiency as values thereby freeing ourselves from the tyranny of materialism. In the subjective dimension we are all born with certain emotional predispositions. During the course of our childhood we inherit powerful memories and developmental influences. These serve as the foundations of our temperaments and cognitive styles. Yet we can grow and change. We can alter our personalities through acts of imagination. We can choose to be haunted or to forgive and be healed of powerful memories. This is not always a simple process. But it is possible!
Let us turn to a metaphoric example. If we use the image of the human as an island surrounded by a deep ocean some of the above can be illustrated. The ocean represents the realm of possibility. This possibility is embodied as a sea of symbolic meanings. The island represents what actually is the current human situation. The island is four dimensional composed of social, divine, natural and subjective realities. The island is largely determined by the past, by genetics and the natural order, by social class, by religious traditions.
Yet the island is not fixed or static. It can change and grow. It is dynamic. The shorelines can recede or advance. The land is altered by the dynamic processes of symbolic imagination. The island can be shaped, landscaped, excavated or destroyed. Parts of the island can be discarded. The process of change is what we refer to as formation. Formation is directed by imagination. Formation is the human process of growth (and inevitable physical decay). Formation is what shapes the island in the midst of the sea. The possibilities from the ocean can be captured and added to the shores. New or different symbols from the sea can be appraised and affirmed. Myths that have been neglected and meanings that have been lost can be recaptured. The island can flourish and change, even with the harsh realities of the determined world.
The island is shaped by acts of interpretation. The core human is constituted by acts of symbolic imagination. The ocean is filled with an almost infinite number of possible myths, symbols and meanings. Through acts of imagination some of these meanings are captured, caught or appropriated. The human fishes in the sea of symbols to "catch" a few important beliefs or myths to guide life.
The above analogy serves to emphasize the importance of the symbolic dimension for any new science of human life. Our paradigm stresses the human as the animal-that-symbolizes. Human life, while largely determined, retains the possibility of growth, change, and freedom. The processes of change and growth are enacted in the search for meaning and form. The human seeks to give shape and meaning to the life process. This occurs through acts of symbolic imagination or what has been referred to by scholars as hermeneutics, the study of human interpretations.
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The question of meaning is of central importance to our conception of health and healing. Health is a state of balance and meaning. Health implies a vital state of meaning and metaxis in the field of life: social, subjective, spiritual and biological. Disease is the disruption of that harmony. Biological disease disrupts the human field of meaning. The previous state of harmony is challenged and imbalance ensues. Healing involves a search for order and meaning. The human must experience a recovery of meaning and metaxis to be fully healed.
Our view of health as a vital sense of meaning and balance presupposes a paradigm shift or the use of a different "map" of the human. This shift is the movement from a mechanical to a holistic model. Our holistic model emphasizes the symbolic imagination and human spirituality.
Modern medicine is a set of theories and practices that have become increasingly objective and quantitative. Technical expertise and instrumentation are its highest values. Concepts such as moral theory, practical knowledge and wisdom have been jettisoned from the dominant medical Weltanschauung. The practical folkways that have historically guided people in common sense and in ethical decisions have been displaced. In their place a vast technical, expert driven medical system has emerged.
For the last 300 some years we have been operating under a vision of the universe and of human reality that is mechanical - like a machine. This is what we will refer to as the Cartesian paradigm. This mechanical vision reduces the human to the purely physical, and views the human as an independent, isolated entity. This view has been variously described as the biomedical model and more recently "technocratic" medicine. George Engel notes:
"classical science readily fostered the notion of the body
as a machine, of disease as the consequence of the breakdown
of the machine."
With the onset of empiricism, the next step from this body-as-machine metaphor was the complete exorcism of the spirit from science. This has resulted in the devaluation of spiritual dimensions of life, as science serves organize society's world view. Ultimately it has lead to an inability to recognize and develop true human spirituality. The atrophy of spirituality is related to a loss of the powers of symbolic imagination. Such a loss hinders healing from illness and has contributed to a narrow and one dimensional view of health.
Our current dominant model of health is inadequate and fragmented. The biomedical model often neglects or minimizes the emotional and spiritual dimensions of illness. It often minimizes and conceives of these matters as being of only secondary importance. There is no doubt that the Cartesian model has proven amazingly effective in the diagnosis, understanding and treatment of purely organic disease. Because of the Cartesian tendency to isolate--to search for discreet independent entities--we have been enabled to discover causes of disease such as bacteria and virus. We have been able to isolate separate organs within the human body and effectively treat them. However, this model fails to take into account how the disease interacts with the rest of the person's life.
Biomedicine can not replace genuine human spirituality. Even the recent obsession with psychoneuroimmunology--the connection between mental and physical health--falls short of a genuine transcendent or spiritual perspective. This rapidly growing offshoot of psychosomatic medicine offers the promise of healing for those who can master its techniques. A rigorous program of mental, secular-spiritual gymnastics is advocated. Biofeedback, meditation, and positive visualization along with a healthy dose of altruism are espoused.
Psychoneuroimmunology operates firmly within the biomedical tradition. The goal is functional, not transcendent. The successful initiate develops increased endurance, productivity and longevity. The patient is dependent on the medical expert to test, train in appropriate techniques, and monitor outcome. It suffers from the problems of medicalization; the re-definition of all human difficulty as medical. It is an expert-driven, technical ideology. Its techniques are also ritualistic and offer only secular forms of transcendence and meaning. From this perspective health is understood as the pursuit of longevity and endurance.
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The biomedical establishment has a hard time understanding the symbolic and spiritual dimensions of illness. Illness is a form of human or existential limit. It is a boundary situation that highlights our finite nature. The symbolic dimension of illness is contained in the person's struggle to adapt and transcend to boundary. We inevitably strive symbolically to cope, understand and transcend the illness through a will to meaning. The illness must be put into a broader perspective and given meaning. In times of suffering what is needed, is a higher integration, that will transform the person, not by eliminating pain or illness, but by revealing a higher meaning and value that is capable of transforming it.
The process of giving meaning to an illness is symbolic and occurs on two levels. First, the person gives proximate meaning related to functional and pragmatic concerns. Next an ultimate meaning is given, usually unconsciously. Take for example the person with a serious medical depression. This illness is characterized by low energy, social withdrawal, poor concentration, sleep difficulties and loss of interest. On a proximate level the afflicted person strives to give meaning to where the illness has impacted functional roles. The role as spouse, employee and friend may all have been affected. The person may understand the illness as a chemical imbalance which is preventing normal functioning.
On the ultimate level the depression could be viewed as a form of punishment and experience guilt. There may be the development of anger and bitterness towards the world which is seen as cruel and unforgiving. Or the person may see the illness as a trial or test in the journey of life. The suffering accompanying depression may be understood as an opportunity for growing in humility and compassion for others. This latter set of meanings aims towards a creative suffering which gives life-affirming meaning to the illness.
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Modern medical science is one-dimensional. It is limited by its biomedical, scientific approach to treating disease. Recent talk of a bio-psycho-social model in medicine is mainly rhetoric. The hard reality is that health care is dominated by narrow technocratic approaches. The symbolic dimension of belief and spirituality has no place in an machine-oriented, expert-driven health system. In essence, medicine has divested itself from concerns of the symbolic realm and the human spirit. In particular, the symbolic realm of ultimate concerns are excluded or devalued.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the medical approach to addiction. Addiction as illness has a profound symbolic and spiritual dimension. Addiction to a substance, emotion or relationship follows upon, or is an intensification of an addiction to symbolic meanings. Along with the physical or psychological disease of addiction there is a spiritual disease related the human ability to interpret symbolic meanings.
People who are addicted become trapped in fixed symbolic meanings. Addiction is a premature closure or constriction in the person's symbolic world view. Concurrent with dependency upon a relationship, substance or emotion is an addiction to a fixed set of symbolic meanings. For example, the cocaine addict is entrapped by the various meanings the coke may have for him or her. There are all sorts of myths in society about this drug that people fall prey to before and during the physiological dependency. For instance, cocaine is often viewed as a status symbol. It indicates the presence of wealth and material success.
The biomedical establishment has a hard time understanding the symbolic dimension of addiction. This is the case even though Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12 Step programs attest to its truth. Full recovery from addiction involves a definite dimension of spirituality. Spirituality is the art and discipline of connecting to symbolic meanings that offer transcendence. This is why the "Higher Power" as a transcendent symbol offers such hope to addicted persons. It functions on the symbolic dimension to promote healing and healthy change. The 12 Step program along with the Higher Power principle is a ritual solution to addiction. As a ritual it guides and instructs the initiate in a path of growth and change. This path of growth is similar to the mystical path described above (purgation, illumination, union) leading to personal transformation or an experience of conversion.
In our medical communities there are a few good treatment centers that offer holistic approaches, but there is increasingly a tendency towards reductionistic and biomedical approaches. Addiction tends to be viewed on proximate levels only, and in particular through scientific, biological or psychological theories. Neuropsychiatry and cognitive behavioral psychology are becoming more prevalent in the field of addiction. These theories are limited. Total healing of addiction extends well beyond their parameters. Addiction as an illness demands consideration of symbolic and spiritual dimensions.
Recovery involves the process of reordering symbolic meanings. It is not enough to just quit the addictive substance. Recovery should aim at reordering what reality means to the patient in all areas of his or her life: physical, psychological, social, and spiritual. For the alcoholic drinking is a meaningful symbol. Recovery changes the meaning of alcohol-as-symbol and the entire constellation of symbols that relate to it. Recovery and healing requires a flexible structure of meanings.
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Today, as a result of modern forces, concerns of symbol, myth, meaning and spirit have been effectively banished as irrelevant from medicine. At best they are seen as peripheral to the treatment of physical disfunction. Today's medical physician is a soldier in the war against disease. The weapons used are our ever more complex and expensive medical technology--X-rays, CAT scans, magnetic resonance etc. The patient's personal fears, felt isolation and impotence, environment and religious symbolizing have no primary position within the medical physician's treatment plan. At most there may be a referral to a psychologist or social worker.
Part of the problem is the "success" of technocratic medicine. The experimental approach in medical science has produced dramatic, beneficial results. These results are easily seen, understood and repeated. They have vastly improved both the quality and quantity of human life. But we have become so fascinated by this that we fail to recognize the importance of spirituality, of the importance of myth and ideology in health and human life. Symbolic meanings and spirituality cannot be tested in a laboratory--they cannot be measured. They are non-rational which is not the same as being irrational. Much of the traditional medical establishment has mistaken their view of the body as a machine as a metaphysical truth.
Another example of highly secular and mechanistic approaches to human distress is found in the field of modern psychology. Cognitive-behavioral psychology provides templates for health and well being. It directs the formation of human personality through the stages of human distress and boundary. It seeks to help the modern individual cope with alienation. This dominant paradigm in psychology has its own concepts and views as to what constitutes health. It offers its own ritual prescriptions for human formation. Human life is reduced to a task of adaptation. Adaptation proceeds according to social conventions rather than universally spiritual norms. Adaptation crises are managed through pragmatic and rational control of emotions. Stress reduction, cognitive skills, and behavioral control measures are employed. Rational-emotive strategies along with psychoeducational concepts serve as guides.
Cognitive psychology and medicine are "ritual solutions" to illness and personal difficulty. They are expert-driven and provide practical tools promoting social adjustment and adaptation. The human is trained, educated and indoctrinated. The life process is ultimately simplified to a human journey towards mediocre conformity.
The influence of an overly technical and physical approach to human difficulty is widespread. It reverberates through many cultural institutions. The educational system, the medical system, the scientific community, the media are all products of this scientific enlightenment. Consequently, there is a widespread disenchantment with the role of beliefs for the respectable citizen. The enlightenment is responsible for the crippling, rational restraints on the genuine symbolic dimension of transcendence and belief.
Alternative explanations such as the ones being outlined in this book are not widely available. The role of symbols and transcendence are noticeably absent in medical explanations and treatments. Life motivating beliefs are excluded from medical concerns. Concerns about meaning and balance are devalued.
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In reaction to this one dimensional, technocratic model in health care a whole generation of "new age" therapies is proliferating. Channelling, shamanism, dream journeys, and crystal power are a few examples. These new age approaches are essentially gnostic backlashes in defiance of rigid scientific views. As gnostic solutions, however, they are prone to serious error. The gnostic throws out the natural and social, and stresses the mental and the spiritual. The human is reduced to a psychic being disconnected from the laws of the natural order and independent of social realities.
There is widespread popular interest and involvement in these alternative forms of "folk medicine." New age mystic and gnostic approaches are fast becoming the new folk medicine for the 1990's. The widespread interest in these approaches attests to a basic human longing for spiritual meaning and transcendence. The problem is that resorting to these approaches leads to another kind of imbalance. Just as rigid, technocratic medicine is imbalanced, so is new age mental and spiritual reductionism.
The issue is one of balance. How can spirituality be incorporated into a balanced view of health? Healing involves an essential aspect of spirituality. We have to be careful though. Just as we can't reduce the human to a purely physical being, we can't reduce the human to a purely spiritual being. Much of the new age mentality makes this mistake. Most new age therapies fall victim to gnostic errors and the over-value the mental and spiritual dimensions of life. We stress the concept of balance. Certainly disciplines such as visualization or prayer can effect healing, but we also need sound medical care. We have to recognize all dimensions of our being and make use of all legitimate paths towards health.
In what manner can we express our caring for the "total person behind the disease?" An expression that would not result in a simple idealism (gnostic-new age) which would interfere with the necessity of proper technologic care? We need both. We need both sound natural science and valid spiritual perspectives. Unfortunately, each approach tends to become rather dogmatic and inflexible. Each approach tends to be overly seductive. Each tends to encourage reductionism, one to the physical/technical, the other to the mental/spiritual. Neither can be relied upon as an exclusive guide to understand health and direct human healing.
Much of this book will focus criticism at this prevailing one-dimensional health care model. The medical establishment tends to reduce the complexity of human health to machine-like functioning. In order to maximize opportunities for health and healing something more than the body-as-machine abstraction is needed. We need a new vision. We need to redefine our ideas on human health. To take the place of biomedicine we will outline a four dimensional paradigm which stresses the symbolic dimension of imagination and spirituality.
The field model understands disease as a biological reality. This disease however impacts all four poles. The illness experience is the total sum of disease as it impacts upon the poles of the field. Illness is synonymous with field experience--the impact of disease upon the ecological field.
When a person becomes diseased in any way it is not just a physical or biological disorder. Illness represents the total impact of disease: physical, psychological, social and spiritual. Surviving or recovering from the illness experience involves the concept of total healing. The person must adapt to illness and re-establish balance. Total healing involves re-establishing balance in all four poles of the field. We feel strongly that the human is much more than a merely functional being. We are more than our social roles and level of physical fitness. Total healing recognizes this and takes into account the realm of symbolic meanings; the realm of the spirit.
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Disease always represents the human experience of boundary or limit. It is these types of experiences that are key to understanding the human-as-field. They are not important in the technical medicine. The lived experience of boundary or limit is always present in disease/illness. The experience of boundary presents one additional demand--that of spiritual adaptation. Adaptation refers to the person's attempt to survive not only the biological dimension of illness, but also the social, spiritual and subjective dimensions. Adaptation is the human as survivor responding to the challenge of illness in all four dimensions of life.
Adaptation occurs on two levels. We refer to the proximate and ultimate dimensions of adaptation. Both are essential to recovery and are inter-related. "Proximate" refers to functional dimensions of recovery. These are addressed through the usual and familiar medical model treatment centers. We know, however, that ultimate dimensions of spiritual adaptation are indispensable to the healing and wellness of individuals. This is especially true in the fields of prevention and health promotion where issues of lifestyle are closely linked with issues of health.
Central to total recovery will be a dimension of fundamental human spirituality. When confronted with boundary all humans are faced with questions of ultimate meaning. The experience of boundary elicits the greater and deeper questions of life. Answers to these deeper questions are shrouded in mystery. They are essentially unknowable or non-empirical. Suffering brings the human face to face with the realm of ultimate meaning and the Beyond, or Mystery.
The realm of ultimate meaning is appropriated through symbolic interpretation. On a deep, primal level we are mainly unconscious of these questions and the answers we provide ourselves. We interpret the mystery beyond our limits in a combination of three main ways. This mystery is interpreted as being benevolent, indifferent, or hostile to human health and fulfillment. This primal orientation will greatly effect the outcome of our attempts towards adaptation and total recovery.
A predominately benevolent interpretation encourages the transcendence necessary for healthy, life affirming symbolization. Such an interpretation often shows itself as a faith in a loving God. For a humanist it shows itself as an unwavering faith in the essential goodness of life and existence for its own sake. A person whose primal interpretation of this mystery as being hostile may view God as unduly harsh and punishing. In the case of a woman with surgery for breast cancer, she may feel her mastectomy was punishment for her sins. If she isn't religious she may not be able to escape from a rage at life's cruelty and unfairness. This will hinder her total recovery.
A person with a primarily hostile interpretation of the mystery beyond our limits is hindered in their ability to re-symbolize. They will have greater difficulties achieving total recovery than someone who interprets this mystery as benign. They are more apt to experience "numbness." This is an alienation from life-affirming symbols. Disconnection from ultimate meanings found in the divine pole results in a dearth of symbols capable of evoking renewed vitality and holistic recovery. Indeed, this interpretation encourages stasis and closure of the field.
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We hope that this introduction has provided for you some degree of orientation
towards the project of this book. Now, let us begin to move into our subject.