The Placebo as Medicine
Viewed as Sham, Placebo Itself May Be the Most Significant Treatment
It is used as a way for researchers to see what benefit a treatment would have beyond expectations of the patient. There is, however, another type of placebo according to Catherine Stoney, Ph.D., with the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) at NIH:
A therapeutic encounter with a person or symbol not intending treatment. Stoney cites examples in NCCAM’s summer 2007 newsletter: 1. Having an interaction with a health care provider and, 2. The presence of something symbolic in the encounter such as contact with a person wearing a “white coat,” perceived as a provider of healing. The significance of symbols cannot be measured objectively and, for that reason, is not valued. Researchers also have an additional puzzle when non-treatment causes positive results. Too often, when the effect of symbolism is recognized by conventional medicine, it is removed from a context of positive meaning and denigrated as “being all in the mind,” as if that makes it illusory.
Significance of Symbols in Real Illness
Symbolism as a living process is recognized by serious dreamers and shamans, a growing segment of contemporary Western society. Take, for example, the symbol of talking with a health care provider. The patient feels better despite lack of treatment. What if one of the central causes of the person’s illness, instead of being high blood pressure, is actually isolation, a social, psychological, or spiritual illness? Some cultures understand illness as being an imbalance in relationships—with oneself, other people, the environment, or the subtle world. This is not to say the person does not have high blood pressure, but it is a symptom, not a cause.
James J. Lynch, Ph.D., founder of The Life Care Clinic and Foundation, states that, “Loneliness is the silent plague of our times. It brings a host of disorders in its wake, including coronary heart disease, hypertension, migraine headaches, …(fainting), depression, excessive anxiety, immune system malfunction, increased vulnerability to substance abuse, marital tension, and overall shortened life-span.”
Pharmaceutical Responses
Despite occasions when the mind concept is recognized in conventional settings, the medical response continues to be pharmaceutical. There are, however, other concepts of treatment that are recognized by other cultures or are in the pioneering stage within our own.
Other Realities
Alternative responses, however, require a different perception of reality from conventional medicine. More people understand the veracity of subjective experiences and are learning practical methods for making them more effective than treatments created by Western reductionism. In summary, people who perceive life on the planet differently have a sense themselves as being spirit having a corporeal experience, rather than as being a body occasionally having a spiritual one.
The person benefiting from contact with the “symbol” of health care may be:
• Receiving love, guidance, or information from the universe through the professional as a channel.
• Receiving love from a person who has chosen to channel care and understanding this lifetime.
• Receiving the energy of love from a person they have a connection with from previous incarnations.
• Experiencing healing from an illness chosen in order to gain specific understandings.
Anecdotal healing literature is replete with stories of how people who suffered illness or accidents become grateful for the unforeseen benefits they received.
Thoughts are Things
Imagination is not illusory. Imagination presents the worlds of possibilities and the worlds as they are. Human beings can learn to attend to this information. Healing and illness emanate from subtle energy, not the other way around. The way people live—their activities, relationships, how they treat others and, especially, how they treat themselves--IS their health.
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