Mind/Body/Spirit: What’s Truly Holistic?
Ouch
Going by the previous two posts and comment threads, it looks like all of us see plenty of mind/body/spirit interconnections. One that hasn’t even been mentioned is the body-mind effect. We all know that we can change our state of mind in a hurry simply by ingesting a little rotten food or banging our thumb with a hammer! More to the point: we inevitably experience unhappy emotional responses to the onset of serious disease or bodily injury and its repercussions – for example, the limitations on one’s way of life that it imposes.
In the previous post I outlined what I called “the mentally emphatic” view of the mind-body relationship, implicit to many of today’s holistic health perspectives. I rejected it in favor of what I discussed as “the physically emphatic” view. I noted that the mentally emphatic view exaggerates the role of the mind and minimizes the greater role that is generally played by physical and biological sources of physical illness.
Additional Terminology
Words have implications.
As described in the previous post, the physically emphatic view is a balanced perspective that fully acknowledges the variety of connections among mind, body, and spirit without downplaying the strong evidence for the primary role of physical and biological sources of physical illness. I’d suggest “Integrative Holism” to refer to this point of view.
And I’d suggest calling the mentally emphatic view “Holistic Mentalism.” It favors underlying psychological and spiritual difficulties over physical and biological causes as primary sources of physical illness despite strong evidence to the contrary.
To summarize:
1. Integrative Holism: The primary causes of physical health problems are generally physical and biological. However, dealing well with such problems psychologically and spiritually in some cases contributes to recovery. This perspective includes an openness to further research and discoveries concerning mind, body, and spirit in relation to physical health and illness.
2. Holistic Mentalism: Underlying psychological or spiritual difficulties are usually or always a leading cause of physical health problems and of non-recovery from physical health problems. This is held as an assumption or an article of faith without regard to evidence.
What do you think? While some commentators have appeared to disagree with this analysis on previous threads, I believe that I’ve responded to criticisms satisfactorily. If not, please let me know - also if you think I’ve overlooked additional viewpoints on the causes of physical illness that are not variations on one or the other of these two perspectives.
Going by the previous two posts and comment threads, it looks like all of us see plenty of mind/body/spirit interconnections. One that hasn’t even been mentioned is the body-mind effect. We all know that we can change our state of mind in a hurry simply by ingesting a little rotten food or banging our thumb with a hammer! More to the point: we inevitably experience unhappy emotional responses to the onset of serious disease or bodily injury and its repercussions – for example, the limitations on one’s way of life that it imposes.
In the previous post I outlined what I called “the mentally emphatic” view of the mind-body relationship, implicit to many of today’s holistic health perspectives. I rejected it in favor of what I discussed as “the physically emphatic” view. I noted that the mentally emphatic view exaggerates the role of the mind and minimizes the greater role that is generally played by physical and biological sources of physical illness.
Additional Terminology
Words have implications.
As described in the previous post, the physically emphatic view is a balanced perspective that fully acknowledges the variety of connections among mind, body, and spirit without downplaying the strong evidence for the primary role of physical and biological sources of physical illness. I’d suggest “Integrative Holism” to refer to this point of view.
And I’d suggest calling the mentally emphatic view “Holistic Mentalism.” It favors underlying psychological and spiritual difficulties over physical and biological causes as primary sources of physical illness despite strong evidence to the contrary.
To summarize:
1. Integrative Holism: The primary causes of physical health problems are generally physical and biological. However, dealing well with such problems psychologically and spiritually in some cases contributes to recovery. This perspective includes an openness to further research and discoveries concerning mind, body, and spirit in relation to physical health and illness.
2. Holistic Mentalism: Underlying psychological or spiritual difficulties are usually or always a leading cause of physical health problems and of non-recovery from physical health problems. This is held as an assumption or an article of faith without regard to evidence.
What do you think? While some commentators have appeared to disagree with this analysis on previous threads, I believe that I’ve responded to criticisms satisfactorily. If not, please let me know - also if you think I’ve overlooked additional viewpoints on the causes of physical illness that are not variations on one or the other of these two perspectives.
Posted by Paul at 12:37 PM Permalink
27 Comments:
Otherwise our use of terms such as psychological, physical, mental, biological, spiritual will fail to illuminate the object of study. Instead, they will fatally obscure it.
In the meantime I don't think there is much if any basis to distinguish between physical and mental illness apart from the separation of disciplines within the current Western medical profession.
I think we should also take evolution into account. Do you accept that we are evolved from animal ancestors? How did what we call "mind" and "spirit" evolve> Do all animals have these, or were they granted to man by God? Alternatively, you could say that both mind and spirit are aspects of human subjectivity resulting from a conscious brain.
It is easier for me to think of myself as a system (my whole being) with functioning parts which sometimes impact each other either in positive or negative ways to affect the whole. Am I getting close to what you mean?
I am glad you brought up the fact that the body and what is going on with it can affect the psychological (our emotions and how we interpret situations). A good example of that is diabetes and how the fluctuations in blood sugar can affect our emotions and how we look at things in those moments. Another example would be how medication to treat high blood pressure can cause depression and anxiety sometimes.
Evolution is a strongly supported theory, so until a better one comes along it looks good to me. I've never really grasped why some think it conflicts with scripture. The Old Testament was written before science was invented, so seems to me people shouldn't turn to it for biology any more than they would for thoughts on how to operate their computers.
SUSIEQ: I just made up those phrases to suggest how the term "holistic" as it's often used today seems to me really to be biased in favor of giving more weight to the mental aspects of physical illness than is warranted by the evidence. Thanks for those additional examples.
ENEMY of the R: I've never written about this stuff before, but I guess it's something I've been forced into giving quite a lot of thought to as someone who, with something this rare, was in continual contact with the patient side of medicine for over a decade while seeking diagnosis and treatment.
IAMVISHESHUR: Yes – the way we do or do not maintain our body reflects the state of mind that leads us to make lifestyle choices that are good or bad for our physical health. Of course, it’s no guarantee: you can do this yet still have things go wrong with your body. Conversely, you also hear of people who smoke, do drugs, etc. living into a physically healthy advanced old age. But they’re beating the odds, while the people who make wise choices are improving theirs. And as I think you suggest, attending to our mental outlook is always a good in its own right and a plus for us and those around us whatever our physical health status or circumstances.
Just got back from an internet free weekend :D
No, you don't have to be a Sufi, but we'd like to see poetry reflecting a relationship with the Divine. We're collecting links at http://blogcarnival.com/bc/cprof_1444.html
TIEL A ANSARI: Thank you, I'll look into this - never did one of these before. Then I'll see if I have something that looks right for it -
Keshi.
I would like to add one more angle most people are not aware of.
Because I have been in the medical field for some 25 years there
are some ideas I would like to throw your way as a result of my
own experiences. Let me start with a little background knowledge.
Every cell in our body holds memory. We know this to be true
because when a liver cell, for example, renews itself it becomes
a liver cell again and not a heart or brain cell. So within that cell
must lay the past (the old cell), and the future (the cell that it will become). And what is memory? It is nothing more than a series
of thoughts. Keeping this in mind then let us direct our attention
to say an addict who has been “clean” for 6 months. For within
the memory of all his new cells still lies all his recent transgressions so that if he finds himself in a situation like he was in the past, perhaps a crowded bar for example, he will then find himself facing the same desires to buy drugs, shoot up and get high again. This tells us that it is not that the body is missing having a certain substance coursing through the bloodstream but that his past thought or “memory” has come back again. This then is the disease of addiction.
All our actions are determined by our thought so until the addict
learns to change his thought patterns such as staying away from bars or people who take drugs etc etc he will never be free from this disease.
Had his thoughts in the first place been such that he decided he did
not desire drugs, did not hangout with people who use drugs etc,
he would not now be suffering from addiction.
The same could be said for the heart patient. Had he not decided
(a thought) to work till all hours, to eat the wrong food, to not
take up exercise etc etc he would not be facing a triple bi-pass,
high blood pressure and everything else associated with an ailing heart. Do genes play a part? Certainly! And for the very same
reason. The DNA cells hold the memory of both parents that includes their, for want of a better word, transgressions, as well. So the child born of a parent who has had cancer, heart or whatever other ailments will quite possibly have it in his/her cells.
The other thing I would like to mention is that many times a doctor
is at a loss to know what is wrong because he only looks at the
physical side. In his attempt to assure a patient that he is in control
of the situation, the doctor unable to stop the patient’s pain, ends up
ordering more drugs or invasive surgery or harmful testing adding
to the already high amount of distress within the patient. The side effects of some drugs are far more harmful then the actual disease itself and the past memories contained within the cell structure has not been helped at all. It is an interesting fact that the body contains its own drug remedies and knows exactly how much to dole out and which particular drug is needed. For instance when
we have a cut the body immediately sends out substances to clot
the blood, start making a scab and endorphins and enkephalins to
reduce the pain. So many of the anti-cancer drugs are extremely
toxic and this again adds a even more to the patient's distress.
Doctors are not trained to heal the mind--only the body--and while
the disease may go into regression for a short time because of
physical help it eventually can still return and probably even worse or as often happens the patient will die from the effects of the toxins.
Hope this helps explain why I, myself, feel that thought has a great deal to do with disease.
Sorry this is so long but wanted to be exact as possible. There is much more I could add but time and space does not allow.
It's just that, and it's a darned good thing, you haven't been forced into thinking about this stuff by spending over a decade in continual contact with the health care system.
JANICE: First, it's always great to see someone strongly disagree without taking offense. That's pretty rare.
However, I have to say I've noticed that when people do disagree, they often don't engage with the other person's points. Here you've laid out a rather lengthy argument. I'd be happy to respond to it point by point. But first you'd need to respond to my major points.
Otherwise, I notice that I basically end up rewriting my major points...
This post mostly introduces some new vocabulary and refers to my previous post because that's where I really outline the essentials of my position. You may well have missed that.
So if you want to read and respond, I'd be happy to reciprocate.
what scientists are discovering every day is quite fascinating. we are learning how our subconscious is realted to all the experiences we get and that happens inside of our brain.
how it happens we are not so sure of. but it is very possible that the inspirations, the feeling of spirit, the mind all are built in inside of our brain.
but we are yet to glimpse the true secret of it all.
DENNIS: Unless someone has a religious belief about spirits as ethereal, non material beings, then the mind does not appear to exist independently of the body. All the same, the body appears to be able to exist with some degree of independence from the mind, or at least of any signs of advanced mentation, as in "persistent vegetative states."
But while the mind and body generally show high interdependence, this doesn't mean that we don't readily distinguish between them nor invalidate that distinction. Interdependence is one thing; conceptual distinction is another.
I'm pretty sure people have always made the mind body distinction - that it has to do not with cultural learning or orientation but immediate perception.
Say 12,000 years ago a Flintstones grandpa leaned back against the cave wall, closed his eyes and went into "the big sleep." I think his friends and family would have noticed right away, and without the need for an education in Platonic dualism!
While we're alive we exist as centers of experience; have consciousness or awareness; sentience; however you want to say it, we're phenomenological entities. That would be "the life of the mind." And while we don't find minds floating around without bodies unless we believe in spirits or ghosts, it's a no brainer to spot someone whose physiology has stopped functioning to the point where they're not around any more mentally.
That's the basic mind/body distinction and I'd guess it's older than civilization.
But surely there exists something about us that is not made up of matter or that does not involve processes.
Thank you for the kind comment. I apologize for not reading the previous posts and correctly answering your questions-yet again.
This will be real short. LOL
I agree with your terminology except that in Holistic Mentalism I disagree that this belief is just an "assumption without regard to evidence." I for one have studied mentalism AND worked in the medical field for many years so my views are not assumptions but an evaluation garnered from a great deal of study and a great deal of applied experience. Being a bit of a doubting Thomas has caused me to look deeper than most care to. However, in the end, they are still only MY opinions and I would never belittle another's opinion.
SID S: Thank you for noticing all that – I really enjoy the commentary I run into here too. Your comment is far-reaching. To pick up on one aspect of it:
It seems to me that especially in the west, we’ve made belief in God as a supernatural Being conceived to exist in distinction from nature into a definitive test for whether a person is religious or even spiritual. We end up dividing each other into those 3 categories you refer to: believer, atheist, and agnostic.
To me it's problematic. Just to pick a colorful anecdotal illustation, I came across a book on Amazon about George W. Bush, "Man of Faith." The Buddha didn't believe in God, certainly not as conceived by the Mind of Bush, as it were. But the idea that the Dubya is more religious than the Buddha was - it's counterintuitive, to say the least...
JANICE: I just googled "mentalism" - had not intended to refer to that and was just adding the suffix "ism" to the word "mental." By "mental" I only meant to refer to the mind.
To belittle an opinion is really to belittle the person holding it; I wouldn't do that either. But I have no objection to refuting opinions that aren't well thought out.
Although we're all equally entitled to hold any opinion we want, not all opinions are created equal. Some, of course, are equal because of the topic being considered: for example, if it's a close call where the evidence is concerned or if it's a subjective area, like preferences in art or music.
In other cases an opinion consists of a demonstrably false conclusion - one based on faulty reasoning or insufficient evidence. That's what I've indicated I believe to be the case for what I've termed Holistic Mentalism.
I will readily admit that some parts of your post went over my head, however, it has been my experience that the Holistic movement as a whole emphasizes the mind, body and "spirit", however, the definition of "spirit" needs to fall into certain guidelines. Namely, it needs to be an all-inclusive, ecumenical spirituality; the "it's all good" kind of spirituality. Which, in effect rules out any religion or belief system that believes in any absolute truth (such as Biblical Christianity, traditional Judaism or traditional Islam).
Interesting post- you got me thinking now- way to go! Ha ha.
While the words "religious" and "spiritual" have lots of different connotations to people, that sounds right to me - that probably the main distinction is that religion is identified with belief, especially the world's major belief traditions, while spirtituality isn't necessarily identified with any of these.
Just had a strange thought: I don't think people would say that the Buddha, Jesus, or Muhammed were NOT spiritual people. They'd say that they were highly, unusually or even supernaturally spiritual.
And if you could go back in time and meet one of them say when he was nineteen or twenty years old, I'd suppose that even though Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism didn't exist yet, you'd still find yourself thinking something like "Now there's one spiritual young man..."
I think many people have trouble compartmentalizing body, mind and spirit. They just want to look at the parts that overlap, even though those parts may be very small indeed. Even if those connections are tenuous.
My primary illness is lupus. A large percentage of SLE patients have type A personalities. Lupus can flare under times of stress. The stress can be on many levels...joyous, harried, physical or pressured. But it doesn't follow that I GOT lupus from having a type A personality or that my stressors are driving my ANAs up. There's a connection, but I had to have the lupus for the stress to impact me that way...not the other way around.
There was some discussion of people with Fibromyalgia and CFS and depression. The state of mind occurs after one is in constant pain or exhaustion. I don't see what's so hard to understand and compartmentalize about that. I really don't. It isn't like the depression caused the physical condition and it's unlikely that alleviating the depression is going to make it go away.
People like to see connections. They like to think they have some control. And that's really what sells the alt-med industry ...control or the illusion of some sort of control.
It's much nicer to think you did something that healed you, or to be blessed with a miracle than to just experience the end of a self-limiting illness or to go into an ideopathic remission.
I've had a few remissions...I've always hoped it was something I was doing right, but the truth is I don't know. It just eased up for a while.
I just wish that those who espouse this interconnectivity of the mind/body/spirit and alt-med would give some thought to the underlying message it sends to those of us who are sick and live with this reality. The message that it is somehow our fault. That if we just thought positively enough that we wouldn't be in this mess. It's a very damaging and presumptuous message to put out there. And it does some very real harm. People die from abandoning life saving or extending treatment to follow some false hope that has been given them. People spend years in agony while mds treat depression and end up happy...but in agony.
In my particular case, the most striking thing has been relentless disease progression with no correlation with my state of mind. In the first several years I went through a lot of grief and anger both from the disease onset and the end of what had been a happy adult way of life, and from what I went through with my HMO. Not to mention the misdiagnosis and my "failure to recover" from something it would turn out I didn't have! But that failure put me at odds with one of the world's leading authorities on MPS. Eventually he became pretty creative in figuring out ways to attribute my non recovery to me. It wasn't until I finally realized "I don't care who this guy is or what his credentials are, I've been following his program completely and it ain't working" and took myself out of his "care" that the next specialist I encountered ordered further testing and found things completely inconsistent with a dx of MPS.
As you suggest, there was absolutely no "chicken and the egg" problem for me either. Prior to disease onset I loved my work, spending time with friends and family, the creative things I was doing with my free time, and physical play - jogging, basketball, fooling around with the kids on the playground. I'd have been crazy NOT to go through grief and anger as part of coming to terms with something that unexpectedly took me away from all this at age 37.
And then after I rounded a real corner mentally on this in 2001, having worked through first the grief and then the anger, my disease just kept right on progressing.
It behaves like any major disease that's inherently progressive and left untreated - cancer, Lou Gehrig's, MS etc etc. But because it's eluded diagnosis, my impression is that for some alternative medicine providers this makes it especially "mysterious" and necessarily mental/spiritual. Kind of like the assumption is that we already know about all the "real" physical diseases, so that must make mine mental! Obviously every disease was "mysterious" before we'd figured out the etiology.
Ugh...
It would be interesting to do a post on why people who overstate the mind body connection do so in the face of plenty of evidence that the main causes of disease are physical, biological, genetic, and that nobody knows for sure what's in store for them.
Since the reasoning isn't sound, I much suspect there are motives involved. Your idea about wanting to maintain an illusion of control - "If I just keep doing my meditation and yoga, nothing bad can happen to me" - that's gotta be one of them.
The loss of control over one's body, life, time, disposable income, and, if things get bad enough, personal independence, are among the greatest losses people can sustain. That motive of maintaining an illusion of control by deciding these things can only happen to those whose minds and bodies are "out of balance" has to be a powerful one.
But it has all the unfortunate consequences we've pointed to and more that people could probably think of if they put their minds to it.
Now a good scientist might keep at it, seeing if he or she can make the mindreading device work. It depends how sure one is of the theory that says the device should work, from other experience. Eventually though it comes down to an individual decision. Does traditional religion explain my life? Does atheism? Does "mind over matter" work? Is my illness mental? Is it spiritual? Is it really because I refuse what someone else tells me I should do? Or do they not know what they're talking about?
This comes up in broad ways beyond one's own health. I think of the occasional fundamentalist who becomes atheist after a child dies of leukemia despite all sorts of prayers and the excuse of God calling the child home sounds hollow. Personal experience is strong, and it really is more than an anecdote as someone struggles through the contradiction in the experience and certain beliefs for years. It's not a one-time event, but an ongoing dialogue between myself and the world about how to make sense of this, one that sometimes lasts a lifetime.
I'm sure you're right that your illness is not mental or spiritual, but physical with both mental and spiritual effects, which then in turn have physical effects, but don't control that much that's physical. There is such a thing as mental, referring to the virtual reality we experience instead of experiencing the world directly. There is such a thing as an illness being purely mental, not the psychoses that seem so biological, but an illness like hysteria where the mind is expressing an unwillingness to move through a perfectly functional nervous system. There is such a thing as spiritual, whatever is non-physical, maybe overlapping with mental, but who can say for sure?
People don't agree on these things. It's one thing that drove me to God. We have to trust someone. My personal experience has me not trusting myself that much. It also has me realizing that God is much more limited than traditionalists say. But God doesn't tell me stories the way many people do, pushing religion, politics, lifestyles or therapies that haven't worked for me. God just helps me. That's so different from those who insist they know the truth.
For example, there's much less "Well, this worked for me so why not try 'blue-green algae'" when it comes to appendecitus or even, today, AIDS or breast cancer. It's much more the siutation with, say, autoimmune diseases where the etiology isn't known. When causes and effective treatments are still unknown, people will try all sorts of things that aren't well studied.
I agree that a dogmatic, "know it all" attitude in all the areas you mention is unhelpful.
Post a Comment