Healing EEs/EHEs/Healing Process Record Type: Review   ID: 797
Meaning & Medicine: A Doctor's Tales of Breakthrough and Healing Dossey, Larry
This book is partly autobiography and partly a new prescription for health and illness—illness brought on by lack of meaning and connection—and health restored by means of meaning. In Part I he gives case histories that show how illness is associated with meaninglessness and how negative emotions affect one's health, and can even bring death as in a chapter on voodoo death. He also deals with the "toxicity of bereavement." There is a very interesting chapter about the health hazards of being a medical patient and another on being a medical student! Part Two is entitled "New Meaning, New Body," which consists of three chapters. The first, 'Meaning Links Mind and Matter," is on the relevance of the theories of physicist David Bohm on the interrelationship of mind and matter. The second is on the Western view of the body as a machine. Dossey suggests we be open to nonmechanical images of the body, which provides more types of therapy from which to choose. The third chapter is on the image of the body as music. Part Three is on "Healing Breakthroughs," opening with a chapter on genes and memes, the latter being ideas, images, meanings. He discusses the power of belief, healing one's self by helping others, healing at a distance, the healing efficacy of not doing but being (acceptance). He gives examples of cases where "being, not just doing, set the stage for the miraculous" (p. 199). He closes with two important chapters: one on how to survive while hospitalized and one on using the imagination for healing.
Publisher Information:	New York: Bantam, 1991. 290p. Chap. bibl: 253-272; 3 figs; Index: 273-286; 3 tables

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