therapeutic intent and the art of observation - stephan a. schwartz

7/29/2019 Therapeutic Intent and the Art of Observation - Stephan a. Schwartz

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Editorial

THERAPEUTIC INTENTANDTHEARTOFOBSERVATIONStephan A. Schwartz,Editor

T herapeutic Intent. The idea that consciousness can have a directeffect on a living organism is an andent and culturally universalbelief. The shamanic cave artof Altimira, Tres Freres, and Lascauxpresents compelling testimony that our genetic forbearers had a complexview of spiritual and physical renewal, one that has survived to the presentunchanged in at least one fundamental respect: Therapeutic Intent. Theintent to heal, either oneself or another, whether expressed as God, a force,an energy,or one of many gods, has consistentlybeen believed to be capableof produdng a therapeutic result. Why?The answer must surely be that regardless of ideology or religion, cultureor race, the manifested result ofTherapeutic Intent has compelled belief. Ithas survived and been used for thousands of years because people gotbetter and the various therapeutic energy practices seemed worth preservingfrom generation togeneration. Thiscan besaid, wbilestillacknowledgingthat many people get well simply because of the self-correcting nature ofNature; or, to a more limited degree, recover as a result of psychophysicalself-regulation. And, from at least the third millenniumB.C. on, many morehave regained their health because of the intervention of their dvilization'shealth system The high dvilizations of the past, like those of the present,

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possessed a very sophisticated annamentarium. How they got it holdslessons worth learning today, aswe seek to unravel the mystery of healing.Modem scientists and clinicians have attained their understanding largelythrough instruments that quantify; indeed, that is ourage's hallmark. Thesystems of the past had only human observation and clinical experience toguide them. Yet, Egyptian phannacology as demonstrated in the Ebers,Smith, and Kahun Papyri medical texts, dating to 2,500 B.C., was astonishingly sophisticated. Physicians knew about one-third of the botanicalslisted in themodem phannacopoeia, a figure made even more impressiveby the fact that Egypt is essentially a desert, with a thin lifeline of greenalong the Nile. Equally significant, they used these botanicals for the samepurposes for which we employ them today, as well as incorporatingnaturally occurring antibiotics into their practises.l ,2,3Norwere the Egyptians alone in these attainments. The Sumerians, in whatis now Iraq, for instance, also possessed a sophisticated practical healthsystem. Cuneiform records from the Nippur Valley make this point.4 It sa conceit to believe that until modem western technological medicinedeveloped there were no meaningful therapeutics.T Wo examples, both from Egypt, give some sense of the flavorand the subtlety of the achievements attained by these ancientapproaches to health: To avoid a variety of intestinal, andother bacterially-based disorders that initially plagued their crowdedcommunities, dynastic Egyptian workers on the Giza Pyramids and at othersites were, at the recommendation of Pharaoh's physicians, fed a dietemphasizing radishes, onionsand garlic. To the archaeological communityand the other scientists who teased this out from ancient references, the dietseemed just another ungrounded magical peculiarity from the past. Theworldwide explosion of medical research which resulted largely from thedemands of World War il, however, began to reveal a different story.Although this research had nothing to do with Egyptology, it explainedjust how relevant that ancient diet reallywas,and how important it is toexplore the implications of ethno-historical source material from an interdisciplinary perspective.

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In1944,American researchers, PedersonandFisher, reported on theantibac-terial properties of onions and other vegetables.s In 1946, Rao, Rao andVenkataraman of India and de Torrescasana in Spain published on thenatural antibiotic principles of garlic.6;7 A year later Ivanovics and Hovcithin Hungary, and Schmid and Karrer in Switzerland, described a naturallyoccurring antibacterial substance in radishes, which the Hungariansnamed Raphanin.8,9,10The Petrie Papyrus describes a procedure used by Egyptian physicians todetennine whether a woman was pregnant, and the sex of her unbornchild. It says:

Yau must put wheat and wrley in a cloth wg. Thewoman isto urinate on it daily...if both germinate, she will bear. If thewheat germinates, shewill bearaboy. If the wrley generates, shewill bearagirl. If neithergerminates, shewill not bear.11At a casual estimation, this seems windy nonsense, of a piece with thecomplex incantations it accompanies. In 1927, however, two Germans,Aschheim and Zondek, developed a test using urine which they claimedtobe95 percent accurate in determining pregnancy in the first eightweeks.12In 1933 another German, Manger, demonstrated that the urine of pregnantwomen who gave birth to boys accelerated the growth of wheat. Those whogave birth to girls had urine that accelerated the growth of barley 13

A s these two examples illustrate the truth is that whenthese earlyEgyptian medical manuscripts were first translated the scientificcommunity, including the medical specialists who looked atthem, was not sufficiently advanced in its own understanding to evaluatewhat it was reading. A failure which has heavily colored the modemappraisal down to the present. More fundamentally, in this context, itsuggests two things about Therapeutic Intent, and the importance ofcareful observation in unraveling how healing energy works.Fll'St, the idea of Therapeutic Intent was not a sad last resort forced ona people who had no other options but to give themselves over to

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magic and illusory gods; and, second, that in the absence of almost allinstruments for measuring physiological change only an extraordinarilycompetent and structured technique of observation, widely sharedthrough teaching centersandconferences, couldhavecreated these medicalsystems. The onlymodernanalogy that approximates is found in homeopathy, with its laborious process ofpravings and repertorization.T his is important because, if the Egyptians and the Sumerianswere correct in their observationally developed physical treatmentsand pharmacologies, a reality demonstrated by modern technological research, perhaps we should be more respectful of their observations concerning the therapeuticpowerofconsciousness. Theirworld viewspanned millennia and although their beliefs in energetic relationshipsbetween the patient, the practitioner,and the force (in this case expressed asgods) may seem quaint to many materialist eyes, it is hard to imagine thesepragmatic observers continuing a practise that produced no results. Aconclusion that becomes even more compelling when one considers threehealth systems from antiquity whicharestill livingand vita l- the Chinese,the Tibetan and the A yurvedic.Technological medicine finds its central metaphor in competition andstruggle. This view of illness sees the body being overwhelmed by alienexternal forces not, as in the Eastern systems, the result of imbalancesin thelife energies with little differentiation between mind and body. Indeed,only recently and partially for the West has Nature become a partner; theidea of energies that can not presentlybemeasured being a difficult leap formany to make. Western therapeutics are all developed through quantifiable measurement, and quantified reaction to their administration. Psychiatrist and oriental medical specialist Leon Hammer, contrasts this withthe Chinese view that "Qi shall be known only as it manifests itself, as itmaterializes, either physiologically or pathologically."14 Significantly, thisdoes reflect the physicists' view concerning energy; only by the measurement of its manifestation, ie., its ability to do work, is it known.All ofthe successful, non-technOlogical strategies for maintaining life havehad no choice but to stress minute observation of thewhole person toobtain understandings, whether phannacologic or energetic. The practi-

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tioner is the instrument. It is a world view strongly supported by culture.These ancient great systems, which have survived to the present Age ofInstruments, are all rooted in cultures where a meaningful percentage ofthe population trains in some kind of discipline of self-observation andseH-reguIation.

I n technological medicine, then, based in a culture which placeslittle stress on self-regulation who can be surprised that the onebranch of the health sciences, psychotherapeutics, which doesstress observation, is also the one which finds the idea of energeticinteractions most comfortable, either within an individual, or betweenindividuals? It should come as no swprise that a very significantproportion, perhapsanabsolute majority,of those in the health professionswho are interested in energy medicine come from this same psychotherapeutic community. This is clearly reflected in the membership ofISSSEEM. Dating at least to Freud's libido discussion in The AnxietyNeuroses, in which he proposes an energy whose affective activity in theunconscious produces changes in an individual's mentaland physical wellbeing, the idea of energy has been an overt part of the refereed literature.IsAnd within the psycho-therapeutic field, perhaps only those of a mechanistic-behaviorist bent would not acknowledge some sense of energeticinteraction between practitionerand patient.The reductionist view, correctly from its bias, sees only diseased organs,dysfunctional systems, and discreteness. The therapist is a warrior in thisscenario, trained to do battle. Western health professionals, practisingmodern technological medicine, pride themselves - it is a core tenetof theirliterature - onmaking sure that the administering practitioner not be apart of the healing process. Given such a view, it would be surprising i fconsiderations concerning energetic interactions were to receive muchattention. By its nature, technological medicine stresses a theory of illnessand eschews an overall theory of health, let alone a sense of a networkof life in which each individual organism resides like a cell ina body. Yetall three of the Eastern medical systems see exactly that.Instead of organs, the Eastern systems see an entire person; instead ofdiscreteness, they see a complex ofenergetic inter-connectedness betweenpractitioner, patient, and the life network. Instead of warriors in battle, they

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are handmaidens assisting a return to balance. Their own life energies areinextricably inter-twined with those of their patients, and their emphasis ison prevention and a theory of health.W e in the West are at the threshold of understanding theseinteractions, just beginning to develop protocols for doubleblind quantification, and only a little ways further towardsunderstanding the physiological effects. It would be a grotesque mistaketo abandon the intellectual gains made through our technologies, or todiscard the scientific method which provides the mechanism for ourinsights. However, it does not follow that because our house is the onebrightly lighted now, that we are the only consequential residence inhistory'shumanvillage. Ifmany observers, over many thousands of years,from many different cultures, have reported these energetic interactions,and demonstrated their therapeutic usefulness, perhapsourcontribution,as with the barley and the wheat of the Petrie Papyrus, is to discoverexactly what is happening, and how to optimize its effects.As we begin a new society and a new journal we will prosper, no lessthan the ancients, by following the leads suggested by close observation,providing we do so without a cherished outcome. The skills andattainments of reductionist technology, combined with the observationalinsights of a wholistic vision which has proven itself across time, canproduce a synergy whose gifts must be greater than those achieved byeither world view alone.REFERENCES AND NOTES1. TheEbers Papyrus, Collection of The University of Leipsic written in 1493B.C., in the New Kingdom, but by language, and for other reasons, most

scholars date the infonnation it contains to the Old Kingdom, 2,780 to 2,280B.C.2. J.H. Breasted, The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus. 2 Vols. (University ofChicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1930). Earlier than the Ebers Papyrus, and thefirst reference to the brain in the history of medical literature.3. The Kahun Papyrus, found in 1898by Sir Flinders Petrie, dates to 2,100 B.C.

and is a text on obstetrics and gynecology.

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4. M. Levey, Some Objective Factors of Babylonian Medicine in the Ught ofNew Evidence, Bulletin ofHistorical Medicine (1961), pp.61-70.5. C.s. Pederson and P. Fisher, The Bacterial Action of Cabbage and OtherVegetable Juices, New York Agriculture Experimental Station Technical Bulletin.No. 273, p. 31, (1944).6. R Raghunandana Rao, S. Srinivasa Rao, and P.R Venkataraman, Investigations on Plant Antibiotics I. Studies on Allicin, the Antibacterial Principle ofAllium Sativum (Garlic), Journal of Scientific & Industrial Research (India), Vol.IB (1946), pp. 31-35.

7. E.U. de Torrescasan, Experimental Studies of the Pharmacology of theActive Principle of Allium Sativum (Garlic), Revista Espanola de Fisiologia(Spain), Vol. 2 (1946), pp.6-31.8. G. Ivanovics and S. Hovcith, Raphanin, an Antibacterial Principle of theRadish, Nature, Vol. 160, No. 4061 (1947), pp. 297-298.9. Isolation and Properties of Raphanin, Antibac

terial Substance From Radish Seed, Proceedings of the Society for ExperimentalBiology and Medicine. Vol. 66 (1947), p p . ~ .10. H. Schmid and P. Karrer, Constituents of Radish. I. Sulforaphen, a MustardOil From Radish Seed, Helvetica Chimica Acta.(Switzerland),Vol. 31 (1948),pp. 1017-28.11. E. Iversen, Papyrus Carlsberg No. Vll1. With Some Remarks on the EgyptianOrigin of Some Popular Birth Prognoses (Copenhagen, 1939).

12. S. Aschheim and B. Zondek, Hypophysenvorderlappenhormon andOvarialhormon im Ham von Schwangeren, Klinische Wochenschrift. (Germany) Vol. 6, p. 1322, (1927).13. J. Manger, Untersuchungen zum Problem der Geschlechtsdiagnose ausSchwangerenharn, Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift. (Germany) Vol. 59(1933), pp. 885-887.14. L. Hammer, Dragon Rises, Red Bird Flies: PsycJwlogy, Energy and ChineseMedicine (Station Hill Press, Barrytown, NY, 1990).15. S. Freud, The Standard Edition of the PsycJwlogical Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol.3 (London: Hogarth Press, 1962), pp. 107-111.

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therapeutic intent and the art of observation - stephan a. schwartz

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