Abstract
This essay investigates the use of ritual in medicine and argues that the healing power of rituals has been under-appreciated and under-utilized in Western biomedicine, despite its own inventory of medical rituals, because of its commitments to biomedical materialism. The argument hinges on an analysis of the confused Western effort to employ only therapies that heal through “specific” physiologic pathways (rather than through the “non-specific” placebo effect). Non-Western medical traditions that embrace healing rituals would be impoverished were they to uncritically adopt biomedical materialism, with its disdain for “non-specific” pathways (such as rituals) to healing.
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Notes
- 1.
The reader should note that relative invariance is enough. To be considered rituals, action sequences need not be codified or otherwise formally prescribed, and they need not be devoid of variance.
- 2.
“Nocebo effects” are non-specific deleterious effects of clinical interventions.
- 3.
Some of the approaches that count as part of “alternative and complementary medicine” (for instance, chiropractic medicine, therapeutic touch, homeopathy, and massage therapy) have adopted most of the rituals of ordinary clinical medicine as it is practiced in TAWN (Trotter, 2000, p. 63). For the most part, contemporary medical researchers have done a creditable job of investigating these approaches, often debunking exaggerated claims. On the other hand, certain approaches are imbedded in cultural beliefs and standards that are radically at odds with the beliefs and standards that structure ordinary clinical medicine in TAWN. Examples include Navajo medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, and Ayurveda. When I refer to “alternative medical traditions,” these are the sorts of approaches to which I refer.
- 4.
The multitude of incoherent accounts is too vast to consider in this chapter. On one version, self-indulgence is acceptable when it is effected lovingly. But, love, on such accounts, is typically incoherent, in that it involves a kind of synchronized self-indulgence, amounting essentially to conflict avoidance. No recognition is possible of the fact that human impulses are deeply contradictory at both the intra-personal and interpersonal levels, and that many human impulses are aggressive or otherwise destructive. If love is ever to transcend self-indulgence, it will be through an account of a proper human end, or telos, which is precisely what New Age philosophy repudiates.
- 5.
My observations about New Age spirituality are based on my perusal of non-scholarly books at bookstores. Though I hesitate to impugn any particular work, some representative titles speak for (or perhaps against) themselves. Consider: When God Winks on Love, by Squire Rushnell (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), which provides instruction on how to interpret “godwinks” – i.e., “silent messages from the universe” which lead people to romantic love, and Healing with Angels, by Doreen Virtue (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 1999), which explains the tenets of “angel therapy” and provides prayers for healing pets, releasing stress and enhancing business (the same author has another book which explains how to heal with fairies).
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Trotter, G. (2012). Why the West Spurns Medical Rituals. In: Solomon, D., Fan, R., Lo, Pc. (eds) Ritual and the Moral Life. Philosophical Studies in Contemporary Culture, vol 21. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2756-4_5
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