The Sociopolitical Status of U. S. Naturopathy at the Dawn of the 21st Century

Notes:

• Naturopathic medicine in the United States had its inception around the turn of the 20th century. Subsequently, it underwent a process of relatively rapid growth until around the 1930s, followed by a period of gradual decline almost to the point of extinction due to biomedical opposition and the advent of “miracle drugs.” Because its therapeutic eclecticism had preadapted it to fit into the holistic health movement that emerged in the 1970s, it was able to undergo a process of organizational rejuvenation during the last two decades of the century. Nevertheless, U.S. naturopathy as a professionalized heterodox medical system faces several dilemmas as it enters the new millennium. These include (1) the fact that it has succeeded in obtaining licensure in only two sections of the country, namely, the Far West and New England; (2) increasing competition from partially professionalized and lay naturopaths, many of whom are graduates of correspondence schools; and (3) the danger of cooptation as many biomedical practitioners adopt natural therapies.

Unorthodox Medicine and American Religious Life

Human nature and the nature of reality: conceptual challenges from consciousness research

Tags:

• Consciousness
• Emotions
• Humans
• Psychology
• Psychotherapy

Notes:

• Holotropic states (a large special subgroup of nonordinary states of consciousness) have been the focus of many fields of modern research, such as experiential psychotherapy, clinical and laboratory work with psychedelic substances, field anthropology, thanatology, and therapy with individuals undergoing psychospiritual crises (“spiritual emergencies”). This research has generated a plethora of extraordinary observations that have undermined some of the most fundamental assumptions of modern psychiatry, psychology, and psychotherapy. Some of these new findings seriously challenge the most basic philosophical tenets of Western science concerning the relationship between matter, life, and consciousness. This article summarizes the most important major revisions that would have to be made in our understanding of consciousness and of the human psyche in health and disease to accommodate these conceptual challenges. These areas of changes include: a new understanding and cartography of the human psyche; the nature and architecture of emotional and psychosomatic disorders; therapeutic mechanisms and the process of healing; the strategy of psychotherapy and self-exploration; the role of spirituality in human life; and the nature of reality.

Homeopathy and the new fundamentalism: a critique of the critics

Tags:

• Biomedical Research
• Complementary Therapies
• Evidence-Based Medicine
• Great Britain
• Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice
• Homeopathy
• Humans
• Mass Media
• Meta-Analysis as Topic
• Primary Health Care
• Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic
• State Medicine

Notes:

• Though in use for over 200 years, and still benefiting millions of people worldwide today, homeopathy is currently under continuous attacks for being “unscientific.” The reasons for this can be understood in terms of what might be called a “New Fundamentalism,” emanating particularly but not exclusively from within biomedicine, and supported in some sections of the media. Possible reasons for this are discussed. New Fundamentalism’s hallmarks include the denial of evidence for the efficacy of any therapeutic modality that cannot be consistently “proven” using double-blind, randomized controlled trials. It excludes explanations of homeopathy’s efficacy; ignores, excoriates, or considers current research data supporting those explanations incomprehensible, particularly from outside biomedicine: it is also not averse to using experimental bias, hearsay, and innuendo in order to discredit homeopathy. Thus, New Fundamentalism is itself unscientific. This may have consequences in the future for how practitioners, researchers, and patients of homeopathy/complementary and alternative medicine engage and negotiate with primary health care systems.

How to Speak Postmodern: Medicine, Illness, and Cultural Change

Notes:

• The modernist “biomedical model” offers an inadequate understanding of illness. At the same time, some of the conceptual constructs that are offered to supplement the biomedical model are carelessly employed. Much that is said and written about empathy and healing, in particular, fails to reflect the historical and critical self-awareness of postmodern thinking at its best.