by Jeanne Achterberg
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Product Description
This influential book shows how the systematic use of mental imagery can have a positive influence on the course of disease and can help patients to cope with pain. In Imagery in Healing, Jeanne Achterberg brings together modern scientific research and the practices of the earliest healers to support her claim that imagery is the world's oldest and most powerful healing resource. The book has become a classic in the field of alternative medicine and continues to be read by new generations of health care professionals and lay people. In Imagery in Healing, Achterberg explores in detail the role of the imagination in the healing process. She begins with an exploration of the tradition of shamanism, "the medicine of the imagination," surveying this time-honored way of touching the nexus of the mind, body, and soul. She then traces the history of the use of imagery within Western medicine, including a look at contemporary examples of how health care professionals have drawn on the power of the imagination through such methods as hypnosis, biofeedback, and the placebo effect. Ultimately, Achterberg looks to the science of immunology to uncover the most effective ground for visualization, and she presents data demonstrating how imagery can have a direct and profound impact on the workings of the immune system. Drawing on art, science, history, anthropology, and medicine, Imagery in Healing offers a highly readable overview of the profound and complex relationship between the imagination and the body.
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Average Customer Review:
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
Very good, 2005-12-04
This book is actually a composite of two different concepts, which the author doesn't link to each other in a clear manner.
The section "shamanism in modern medicine" is poorly written. Most psychologists (like the author) hold that everything encountered in altered states of mind actually happens in the mind. Some Jungian psychologists softened this approach by postulating the existence of archetypal symbols. Conversely, shamans across the world and across millennia hold that there are parallel universes that are inhabited by independent spirits who may, and do, interact with this world. Who should we believe to, the scholars or the ... people in the business? Regardless, Achterberg completely disregards the "other" point of view and, in so doing, she fails to deliver objective information.
On the other hand, the section about mental imagery and healing is truly excellent. Self healing is a phenomenon that cannot be possibly denied, the placebo effect being the prove of that. The author explores the possible connections between imagery, the nervous system and the immune system. Most of what she says makes perfect sense, although current scientific evidence is not sufficient to support her thesis. The author points out that there is a strong economic pressure against research in this field, and she is perfectly right. Anyone working for a pharmaceutical company (a tremendously powerful lobby) would never, ever look favorably to research aimed to prove that the mind CAN heal the body.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Unfortunately not Scientific Enough, 2002-03-09
I had high hopes for this book. A lot of modern books on shamanism are written by modern practitioners from non-shamanic cultures, for the consumption of other would be practitioners. A few more interesting ones are written by social scientists of various types, such as anthropologists; these tend to be a lot more accurate and interesting to me. And some are written by people who are experimenting with applying shamanic techniques in modern western settings, and reporting on what they've tried, and what results it's had.I'd hoped this was one of the latter category. It may still be, but I'm having trouble reading it. The author states a large number of things as unquestioned fact which are neither unquestioned nor fact. For example, she clearly believes in European witches as being both shamans (medieval Europe was not a shamanic culture) and cultural survivals of Celtic priestesses. She also seems to be citing Michael Harner as her primary anthropological source, along with Mircea Eliade (good, as far as he went), and Carlos Castenada (usually believed to have invented his "data"). She also presumes some interesting common knowledge; I was amused to see her alluding to the "Medicine Wheel of Western civilization" as having "looked to the North for too long now, having much knowledge but little feeling." (What kind of audience is she writing for, if she presumes they are familiar with the 4 European elements, and their reinterpretation in a quasi Native-American context?) I've seen worse. She's not quoting information channeled from Atlantean Grand Masters, or insisting that "science" will "prove" her favourite religious dogmas. But I'm still having a lot of trouble getting past the first couple of chapters, to see whether she has any useful information, such as reports on what she's been doing, and how or whether people are actually being healed by it.
28 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
 scientific evidence for how imagination heals, 1999-09-05
This author successfully combines traditional scientific scholarship with an open-minded approach to complementary modes of healing such as shamanism, visualization, and energy work. She provides the experimental evidence that explains how images we hold in our minds really do effect changes on the physical level--it has to do with how the "imaging" part of the brain connects to brain structures which regulate hormones and the immune system. There is also a fascinating section on the wise-women healers of Europe and how they were persecuted for practicing medicine which went against established medical practice as well as against the Church. It seems the ancient healers were on to something that became suppressed, and which is now being rediscovered by scholars as well as healing practitioners.......The author is professor of psychology at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. Thus, she knows well how to use reductionist scientific methods as a tool while still seeing the possibilities lying beyond reductionism in the transpersonal plane.
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