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All1Spirit
USA
149 Posts |
 Posted - 02/08/2013 : 16:02:30
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The three primitive emotions of man are fear, anger and self-love. During development to maturity, self-love turns into self-respect or unselfish love for others. In any well balanced character self-respect must be dominant or ill health is likely to follow, particularly if the fear and anger elements are heightened in intensity.
"The individual usually tolerates the heightening of anger better than fear," writes a prominent St. Louis neurologist. "Fear is commonly the factor to tip the balance towards ill health."
Upset emotions result in functional, but not organic, illness—symptoms, not disease. They cause much apprehension but are usually curable. Frequently before the emotional basis is uncovered, they puzzle both patient and physician.
Most of the failures debited to medical treatment belong in this category. The patients go from physician to physician, specialist to specialist, each of whom finds some little deviation in his field, none sufficient to account for the illness of the whole man.
Around and Around the Circle We Go....
The Answer Sits In The Middle and Knows... |
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chickenbone
Panama
398 Posts |
Posted - 02/08/2013 : 17:41:30
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| Right, All1Spirit, isn't it the truth??? |
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Dr James Alexander
Australia
127 Posts |
Posted - 02/08/2013 : 17:45:52
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what a great quote- thanks. As i contend in my book, 'The Hidden Psychology of Pain', you would have had a better chance (before the 1960's) of coming across a health professional who actually knew what was going on with chronic pain than you would now. Aided b y the space race, the 1960's saw a boom in medical technology, which further reinforced the 'mechanistic bias' which has been lurking in our cultural psyche since Rene Decartes (well, in fact, since some schools of ancient Greek thought), ie, the notion that we are a clever collection of nuts and bolts (rather than being living growing feeling organisms). We have a lot to be grateful for with advances in medical technology- who would ever have thought a heart transplant was possible until relatively recently? However, there have been no technological advances in the treatment of chronic pain, despite learning a lot more about its biological and neurological processes. I am yet to meet a person who has overcome chronic pain as a result of their knowledge of the 'neuro-matrix' model, despite it being presented as therapeutic information.
At the turn of the 20th century, the 'father of British medicine', Sir William Osler stated, 'It is many times more important to know what person has the disease, than what kind of disease the patient has'. This wise medical attitude was being obscured by the germ theory of disease, but got a boost via Freud and one of his followers, Franz Alexander (who established the discipline of psychosomatic medicine in the 1930's). With the death of Alexander in the early 60's, and the astonishing advances in medical technology at the same time, our culture was further seduced into the mechanistic bias- to the point now where it is presented as a self-evident truth, rather than as a tool, or as an arbitrary and debatable way of looking at reality. Notions of psychological factors involved in the causation of illnesses and experiences like chronic pain were relegated to the dust-bin of medical history, until Sarno and others saw sense in bringing psychology back into medicine. I suspect that physicians and psychologists of the 1930's, 40's and 50's would be amazed to see that most of the pain industry considers psychological factors to be largely irrelevant.
can you provide source for the quote from the 1930's neurologist, and their name etc? I'd like to use it as an example of wisdom from past eras that have fallen by the way side- thanks.
James |
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chickenbone
Panama
398 Posts |
Posted - 02/08/2013 : 18:06:21
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Hi Dr. James, As long as you are following this thread:
I am almost finished reading your book. I am really favorably impressed with it. Your knowledge of the subject matter is outstanding, and yet the book is very readable for the average person.
But more than the book just being really good, it is clearly written as a gift to humanity with no strings attached or ulterior motives. It offers honest information at a time when honest information is really hard to come by. It is both genuine and generous.
Thank-you for taking the time to write it. |
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All1Spirit
USA
149 Posts |
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chickenbone
Panama
398 Posts |
Posted - 02/08/2013 : 18:43:57
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All1Spirit, Thanks for the link.
Sorry, I did not mean to hijack your thread with my note to Dr. James. I probably should have posted it as a new thread or on Alix's book review thread. |
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Dr James Alexander
Australia
127 Posts |
Posted - 02/08/2013 : 21:08:30
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thanks for the reference All1Spirit. The article shows the differences between wisdom (from the past) and information (the current era).
(and at the risk of further hijacking the thread- thanks for your statements about my book Chickenbone- your appreciation of it makes the effort worthwhile. Like most other on this site, if you have benefited from these ideas, you want to spread it and help others. Being a shrink, i'm in a peculiar position in society- it gives me a window into human experience, and it seems only right to share my experiences and observations with others who could benefit from them).
James |
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Written in 1936
