Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Modern medicine, mind and disease


Medicine, as currently practiced, studies the physical processes of disease in the body, but not the behavior of the consciousness that impacts on physical functioning. This is due to the difficulty in obtaining any meaningful "scientific" measure of thought patterns in the mind and instead, having to rely on the patient to describe their mental state, which is of course unreliable when compared to the simplicity of observing objective bodily states.

Science tends to stick with what can readily be observed, hence the focus on identifiable physical processes rather than the states of mind that give rise to these processes. It is no wonder that people of a “scientific” nature, and those influenced by them, tend to view the body as a machine and regard the role of the consciousness as being negligible in the cause and cure of disease.

However, the often marked variance in health conditions in people suffering from multiple personality disorder (disassociate identity disorder), as they switch from one personality to another, and the existence of the often powerful “placebo” effect points to the crucial role consciousness plays in the "outpicturing" of bodily conditions.

Sharka Todd

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