Therapeutic Touch as Transpersonal Healing

by Dolores Krieger, PhD, RN

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New York: Lantern/Booklight 2002   291pp   6pp notes/refs   $20.00

Dolores Krieger takes several steps forward in this book.  She shares transpersonal aspects of healing that take TT beyond the mechanistic bioenergy model of simply assessing bioenergy fields that reflect physical and psychological problems, and adjusting bioenergy states through healer intent. Yet Krieger firmly grounds the transpersonal in theory and experiential explorations, with a strong focus on teaching in a responsible way.

Krieger presents lists of descriptors for various aspects of the TT experience that are helpful in dissecting and analyzing TT, but most of all – in appreciating its multi-faceted, multi-layered potentials for bringing the TT therapist  (Krieger uses this term instead of healer) through bioenergy interactions into ever greater awarenesses of the transpersonal dimensions of healing.Discussions of the chakras (major bioenergy centers along the midline of the body) emphasize their transpersonal resonations with the cosmos, in addition to their regulation of localized body functions. Krieger strongly advises that a person should be helped to regulate her own chakras and that these centers should not be treated by the TT therapist. (In this, she differs substantively from practices common to many other healing approaches.)

Krieger has several earlier books on TT. This one takes the reader more deeply into the need to focus on the personal and spiritual development of the healer. A few cogent points:

The fundamental factors in the practice of Therapeutic Touch are the TT therapist’s knowledgeable use of her chakras with intentionally, an empathic recognition of the limitations and aberrations of the healee’s imblanced vital systems, and, most importantly, the therapist’s uncoerced extension of permission to her own inner self to integrate with her physical, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual levels of consciousness in the compassionate interest of helping of healing someone in need. (p. 75)

…the concept of Warrior as archetype…The war, if that term is even applicable, is always against one’s own weaknesses and self-imposed limitations, and against those in society who would throttle others’ rights to similarly grow in the image of their innermost selves.  The Warrior is adamantly committed to this self-search and unyielding in the pursuit of gaining control of her personal world. (p.. 195)

I have often thought of the most potent of personal polluters- Wishful thinking, Impulse, Fantasy, and Exaggeration- as the Four Dragons. (p.. 200)

My growing hunch is that there are significant but unrealized gaps in what we know about the human condition.  One of these gaps contains the latent drive, a need to help or heal that remains close to the surface of our personalities but has been strongly repressed in Western society at various times by both church and state. (p. 13)

The reviewer found this book more focused on transpersonal issues than Krieger’s earlier ones and warmly recommends it to anyone wanting to learn about Therapeutic Touch.

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