Anthropology of Symbolic Healing [and Comments and Reply]

TLDR

A number of investigators agree that popular medical systems of tribal, peasant, and allied peoples are effective, yet most studies focus on ethnopharmacology and ignore psychosocial factors. Recent developments in psychophysiology may offer insights into these neglected psychosocial aspects of symbolic healing. The authors propose that symbolic healing by shaman or physician mobilizes the patient’s biochemical response system, requiring a reconceptualized unitary model of the human organism based on neuroendocrinology. The model offers a nonreductionist theory of medical effectiveness that explains observations beyond the explanatory power of traditional biomedical reductionism.

Abstract

A number of investigators are agreed that the popular medical systems of tribal, peasant, and allied peoples are "effective." Most of the literature closely examining that effectiveness focuses on the ethnopharmacological dimensions of the healing systems and generally ignores psychosocial factors. Recent developments in psychophysiology may offer insights into these neglected areas. The specific idea to be examined here is that successful "general medical treatment," or "symbolic healing," by either the shaman or physician, is based in part on a psychosocial mobilization of the patient's biochemical response system. Moreover, it is argued that to account fully for these processes we must reconceptualize the character of the human organism; a unitary alternative to standard Western Cartesian dualism (mind vs. body) is proposed, based on a model derived from recent research in neuroendocrinology. This model can be the basis for a nonreductionist theory of medical effectiveness needed to account for a series of observations (derived from both anthropological and medical contexts) which seem to transcend the explanatory powers of the traditional reductionist biomedical model.