Soul Medicine: Restoring the Spirit to Healing

Helen Graham has written a scholarly and challenging book. To chart the role of the soul in medicine and healing, she covers a huge range of topics from the fields of history, philosophy, religion, science and medicine. This in itself is a major achievement. In addition, she sets out a challenge to mainstream psychology to rehabilitate the soul as a crucial aspect of healing in the 21st century. Graham is a psychologist by background and has a long-standing interest in the psychology of health and healing and complementary therapies. She explains the term "psychological medicine" as literally meaning "applying knowledge of the soul in the art of healing" given that the words derive from the Greek "psyche" meaning "soul" and "logos" meaning "study" and the Latin "medicina" meaning "the art of healing". Thus, psychological medicine is not an alternative to orthodox Western medicine but in Graham's words, "provides a more inclusive context for it, embracing and integrating body, mind and spirit." Over the course of this book, Graham provides a great deal of this context. Over the centuries, the soul (or psyche) has gradually switched from being the source and origin of the physical world (including the body) to being the material result of the physical world (in other words, consciousness is the consequence of brain activity). The early chapters plot the history of the soul as it relates to psychology, medicine and healing in ancient cultures, Greek civilisation, the Middle Ages up to the modern era. She catalogues how the soul became to be marginalised from both philosophical and psychological discourse. This is particularly marked from the 17th Century onwards with Descartes featuring prominently in its demise. The consequences for psychologists in the 20th Century are profound. Figures such as William James, "the father of American psychology" refer to the "mind" and the "self" but not the soul. This became more marked with the behaviourism, which conceived of people as machines to be observed with the same precision and objectivity as other natural sciences. By the mid-20th Century, this focus on objective aspects of human functioning was the predominant paradigm within psychology and virtually all references to the soul had disappeared from psychology textbooks, a situation that prevails to this day. The irony of this situation is not lost on Graham. At just the moment when physicists were questioning the Newtonian view of the world, behaviourism was mapping that outmoded mechanistic mindset onto the self. The route to the integrated, inclusive context that the author seeks to achieve is thus clear: psychology needs to move into a post-Newtonian worldview. In the next section of the book, Graham explores the idea of soul in Eastern thought and argues that their emphasis on balance, integration and wholeness provides a basis for a "spiritual psychology". There is a cognitive resistance to this idea in Western psychology largely because it describes only one state of consciousness, that of the "healthy functioning ego". It ignores the possibility of other dimensions to consciousness. Worse still, altered states of consciousness are often viewed as pathological.

Because Eastern traditions include the soul or the psychological in their understanding of health and healing, their models of medicine are intrinsically integrated. In contrast, Western medicine and psychology are two separate disciplines. Soul medicine is not only dependent on the relationship between a person and their healer but also on an understanding of soul itself. Graham maps out models for this based on the work of. amongst others, modern physicists such as Bohm and Schrodinger, the field of psychoneuroimmunology and Sheldrake's morphogenetic fields. She argues that 21st century medicine and psychology will need to accommodate these new theories and not only deal with individuals but address their whole being within the context of "the whole of things". In the last part of the book, Graham sets out some of the changes she thinks will need to happen in the context of the therapeutic relationship, diagnosis and treatment. Graham explores the approach to relationship between client and therapist. As Jung said, " the doctor is effective only when he himself is affected …When the doctor wears his personality like a coat of armour he has no effect". Carl Rogers, the founder of person-centred psychology, put this relationship at the core of his work and emphasised the importance of being with a person. Simply by being attentive, caring, open and genuine is therapeutic and brings about positive changes that move people in the direction of wholeness and health. Thus establishing rapport is a critical component of a healing relationship. This is borne out by the power of the placebo effect, something that modern medicine tries to design out of its treatments rather than capitalising on its undoubted power. There is a range of new (yet also paradoxically ancient) techniques to assist in determining the cause of ill health or "dis-ease". Thus intuitive diagnosis returns to the original concept of soul determining the body or in Leichtman's terms, "the purpose of the body is to express the light of the soul, which is pure consciousness. The soul is the origin of health because it contains all the ideal patterns of health for mind, emotions and body." Divining is another technique capable of providing insight into the condition of the soul as do a range of holographic approaches. Not only can these methods accurately identify physical illness, they can help a person understand how and why an illness has developed. For me, the final chapter of this otherwise excellent book is somewhat disappointing. In describing methods to treat the soul, Graham catalogues a large number of complementary therapies, from homeopathy and Flower remedies to laughter therapy, meditation and trans-psychic healing. What is lacking is the integrative vision that is set out in the opening part of the book. What I was looking for was a view about how we go about aligning the two different paths – orthodox Western practice and the new/ancient soul-based approaches. The audience for this book appears to be practising psychologists and their teachers, but I didn't think it offered these people much advice as to what they could do in their current practice to move towards a soul-based therapeutic approach. I was left thinking that they should abandon their existing practice and re-train in complementary therapies. What was lacking was any proposal for change within current psychology or medicine to incorporate the wider vision that is so well explored in the book. Yet orthodox Western medicine is changing. It is not immune to the public concerns over medical arrogance as seen recently in the inquiries at Bristol Royal Infirmary and Alder Hey Hospital. This along with the wide availability of information and alternative viewpoints on the causes and treatments of illness is equalising the power between the doctors and their patients. The huge growth in the use of complementary therapies by the general public is a response to the growing realisation that Western medicine does not have the answer for every ill. Many healthcare professionals have qualifications in complementary therapies and are increasingly encouraged to practice them. For example, acupunture is now fairly routine in pain clinics and maternity hospitals. Up to 25% of doctors practising medicine in Scotland have received training in homeopathy. The use of herbal remedies is widespread in German medicine. At the same time, physical illness can respond effectively to certain medical interventions. The technology undoubtedly works in many situations insulin for diabetes, hip replacements, cataract extraction and reconstructive surgery to name a few examples. It is however, important that it success is incorporated into a wider view of healing and health. Whilst I enjoyed this book immensely and found it wide-ranging in its scope and ambition, I was left saying "yes, and?" . The question which remained unanswered for me was: how do we engineer the change within medicine and psychology if they are to provide a useful and effective service to people in suffering and distress?