Themes of Healing in Sontag, Starhawk, and Bly - Essay Example

Themes of Healing, Illness, and the mind/body relationship in Sontag, Starhawk, and Bly The mind and the body interaction is viewed in different ways by the holistic community, and conventional medicine. While conventional medicine is content to treat the single sickness, and then move on to possible illnesses resulting from this treatment (Such as the case of antibiotics, which are well-known for causing yeast infections, and even contributing to the rise of Superbugs like C.Difficile. Each of these consequences, or ‘side-effects’, are treated as separate illnesses by conventional medicine). Holistic medicine, on the other hand uses drugs which work with the patient’s illness, and the side-effects are frequently anticipated and treated as part of the original problem. Peter Fraser defines the rules of conventional vs holistic medicine thus: A person with a fever has a fever because it is the process the body uses to combat disease and infection. Conventional medicine often tries to reduce the fever even when it is not life-threatening and so often negates the body’s own healing actions (Fraser 1998). Here it can be seen that the idea of holistic medicine is to produce more of the symptoms which are created by the body’s own defense systems. Sontag, Starhawk and Bly all offer differing opinions of holistic medicine, and the mind/body connection, and their debates are an interesting introduction to themes of healing, causes, and wounding which are common metaphors in the discussion of holistic medicine. Through an analysis of some of the academic views offered in text, and a discussion of the wounded healer both in culture, and modern holistic medicine, the modern practice of shamanism should be shown to be important, relevant, and still contained within the group mind. Views offered in the texts Modern academic debate is concentrated around the connection between the patient and the illness: Sontag, for example, sees illness such as ‘Cancer’ as a disease developing entirely independently of the ‘host’, and therefore not connected with lifestyle, or any other outside influence. She also emphasizes that ‘treatment’ is the sole option for all illnesses, and that eventually, Science will be able to find the ‘One cause’ of cancer, and One day…its etiology becomes as clear and its treatment as effective as those of TB have become (Sontag, 2001). Sontag demonstrates that at the same time as she dismisses those seeking lifestyle causes for cancer and other illnesses as blaming, and making cancer the subject of Anti-intellectual pieties and a facile compassion all too triumphant in contemporary medicine and psychiatry (Sontag, 2001). Sontag is also placing a great deal of emphasis upon the importance of science in medicine; so while she might criticize the ‘Complimentary medicine’ movement as bringing spirituality into medicine, she also has a great deal of ‘faith’ in the power of future science to find this magical one cause for cancer, and then provide an equally magical cure. In assessing Sontag’s book, it should not be forgotten that, at the time of writing, she was also suffering from cancer. Her views might be seen as reflecting her own battles, and her own battleground between her faith in science, and her illness. In contrast, Starhawk has clearly shown that she believes that science is not enough to cure a person: her book, The Fifth Sacred Thing, that fifth thing is the mind, and the potential of the mind to hurt or heal; healing begins with the balancing of mental processes. In the novel, the South is totally dependant upon science for both its sickness, and its cures, and the dependence of the people upon these pharmaceutical inventions ensures their obedience to the regime. In the North, the emphasis is upon holistic healing, although there is also space in the Northern worldview for science; here, women are the healers (The impression persists that Southern healers are men), and also being connected with the earth and with spirituality (The alliances are made with the herbs themselves, treating them as sentient beings). Starhawk has said that An earth-based spirituality has not need to divorce itself from scientific enquiry. It can take the cold-facts of science and weave them into the sense of awe and wonder with which it approaches the mysteries (Starhawk, 2006) She also makes clear that she sees the healing process as a connection with earth (not surprising since she is leader of the Earth-spirituality movement), and that healing is an important result of this, not a cause: The whole balance of life and nature is deteriorating really fast all around us, we really desperately need some kind of different and healing connection with the earth. (Wood, 2006) Starhawk has clearly associated this necessary healing and creating with the power of women, and specifically women witches and shamans. Siberian shamans were commonly women, and shamans saw their ancestors as both male and female, so female shamans as healers and nurturers are a valid concept in terms of traditional shaman practice. Robert Bly, on the other hand, sees men as being made less powerful through the development of modern society: If the mother wounded him through her possessiveness, making him feel inadequate and too small, in time he becomes really helpless, has no status (Bly 1991, page 72). The mother’s rage is an important element of Bly’s theories, and by his placement within the text, he is also clearly associating this with the ‘wound’, which can be both an initiatory wound (Bly, 1991, page 216), and a womb from which to grow a full man: and possibly a shaman too (Bly, 1991, 218). While Bly and Starhawk seem very connected, through their association with healing through Earth and mythology, they are separated by their conceptions of women within this spirituality. Sontag is clearly a lone contender, in that she sees spirituality as a negative influence within medicine. However, both in shamanic terms, and also within complimentary cultural references to medicine, it is clear that healing and cures are the prerogative of the wounded practitioner. The Wounded Healer The perception of the general public on the differences between conventional and alternative medicine may not be as clear cut as that within contemporary academic debate: for example, the TV show House, which has garnered a lot of praise, shows a practicing doctor who seems to be trying to treat the patient in a holistic way: not looking at one symptom at a time, but considering them all as examples of one illness; he has also been depicted recently as communicating with a severely autistic child, and demonstrating empathy with a mute and handicapped man through sharing a similar experience with him. These could both be taken as examples of shamanistic practice; empathy and communication are paramount. In addition, Dr House is a wounded healer, affected with a disabling limp, which is in line with shaman’s being wounded, disabled or unwell in some way (Madden, 2004), and in the first series, he is often shown using drugs, and maybe being addicted to the mind-altering substance, as is also the practice of shamans before healing His first task is diagnosis. He drinks Ayahuasca… the consciousness-changing substances permit him to see into the body of the patient (Harner, 1983, page 22) While House does not prescribe homoeopathic remedies, this is probably further than a popular TV show is prepared to describe. What is interesting in homoeopathic terms is how House looks at the patient, and how he reaches his diagnoses: not by treating each problem individually, but assessing them as a whole, weighing and altering his judgments as each symptom announces itself. Starhawk’s presentation of items in The Fifth Thing connect here with notions of shamanism, and with healing; Bly can also be seen as praising the wound as an initiation into the mysteries of life, and spirituality. Sontag seems to be at odds with popular conceptions of doctors; people seem to want their healer to be connected with them, whether this is through a wound, or through investigating life-styles and family history; these two features would be the traditional prerogative of the shaman, or the homoeopathic healer in modern alternative therapy. Bibliography Bly, Robert. (1991) Iron John Element, Dorset, UK Fraser, P (1998) “The Proving of Homoeopathic Remedies” Positive Health Magazine June 1998. Harner, Michael. (1982) The Way of the Shaman Bantam New Age Books Madden, Kristin (2004) The Book of Shamanic Healing Llewellyn Worldwide, St Pauls MN. Sontag, Susan. (2001) Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors Picador USA Starhawk, Miriam (2006) Praising Evolution: A meditation on Breath and Life http://wwwbeliefnet.com/story/36/story_3683.html Wood, Corinna “Healing the Earth, the Starhawk interview New Life Journal June 2006 Read More