Dr Daniel Benor           

...the belief system that possesses perception is not just abstract in nature.  It is fuelled by imaginative, creative power.  It is an active, dynamic shaping of the meaning and impact of the world by the mind.  And so to rethink the world in the act of seeing it means putting out a deep re-appraisal of what we see.  Then we start to experience the world as being different.
                                 John Heron - Confessions of a Janus Brain

Differences between healers and conventional health care professionals are numerous and complex.  Healers and conventional medical practitioners often appear to be speaking different languages, even when discussing the same patient.  Medics speak of analysing symptoms to deduce a physical diagnosis, of organs and biochemicals which are functioning in normal or abnormal ranges, of chemical, surgical and radiotherapy treatments, and of success or failure in arriving at cures for illness.  Healers speak of intuitive impressions, knowing what 'feels right', of energies, chakras, spiritual growth, and of caring rather than curing.

  How can healers and medics improve their communications?  Until now they have pretty well avoided each other.  Though healers have wished to be accepted by doctors, most have not known how to communicate in terms which medics find comprehensible (without even considering whether what healers have to say might or might or might not be acceptable to medics).

  Medics receive rigorous training in logical analyses of enormous masses of data on healthy and diseased functions of parts of the body and of the whole organism.  They are drilled in the scientific methods of supporting their beliefs with precise clinical observations and laboratory measurements.  They are convinced that these scientific methods will ultimately explain every aspect of man.

  Healers are focused on intuitive and feeling perceptions which guide them to perceive what is wrong with healees and how to help them.  Many healers scan the body with their hands or may perceive disharmonies in the healee - in body, emotions, mind and spirit - through visual impressions of the aura or other sensory inputs (such as words which come to their inner ear, body sensations which mirror healees' problems, or even smells).  Some healees direct intentions, energies, or 'healing' (in whatever manner they understand this concept) to the parts they find out of balance.  Others turn over the problem to higher powers - either in the healee, in themselves, or in the cosmos, without seeking to alter the healee in specific ways.

  Historical and social trends contribute to difficulties in bridging the gaps between healers and medics.  The western world has focused on the analysis and manipulation of the material world.  In medicine this has brought about impressive biochemical treatments for infections, hormonal disorders and surgically correctable problems.  Genetic engineering promises to extend mechanistic treatments.  Technological medicine has held out the promise that ultimately all the ills of mankind will be explained by biochemical analyses - even the functions of the brain, which is believed by many to be the origin of the mind.

  Even so, through our explorations of matter we have arrived back at the intuitive truths which mystics perceive and have reported through several millennia.  Over the past century modern physics has confirmed Einstein's theory, E = mc2, proving that matter may be understood either as particles or as energies.

  Conventional medicine has not yet digested or absorbed the far reaching implications of Einstein's observations.  Conventional medicine is still wedded to Newtonian concepts in which matter rather than energy is addressed in helping people to deal with illness.  Newtonian medicine has much to learn from energy medicine.  It is the energy body which healers address for diagnosis and treatment.

   Newtonian medicine has also focused on the illness the person has, rather than on the person who has the illness.  It has assumed that logic and reason will conquer all.  Newtonian medicine is impatient with and often insensitive to people's feelings, which in many instances may be major contributors to disease and dis-ease.

  The observations of Carl Jung are helpful.  Jung pointed out that everyone has a personality style which is dominant on one or two of four parameters which are paired in polar opposites.  (See Figure 1.)

  Thinking type people organise their perceptions of the world and responses to them through logical analysis and planning.  They usually do not pay much attention to their feelings and may even denigrate feelings as 'illogical', unreasonable', and 'unreliable'.  They are like the Mr Spock of Star Trek fame.  A scheduled, predictable world is comfortable to the thinking type.

  Feeling type people experience life as a montage of emotions.  That which is emotionally charged feels real, alive, interesting and exciting.  Thoughts alone are colourless, plans are acted upon if one is in the right mood, and communication is through the tones and nuances of interaction more than through their content.  Occupations and activities which excite are the ones to which the feeling type responds, be it with attraction or withdrawal.

  Intuitive type people grasp information in patterns and gestalts.  They feel their way through situations, often not even verbalising to themselves how they make decisions.  Perceptions come in wholes - and any part they might analyse is less than the truth.  They instinctively know the right thing to do in familiar situations.  In unfamiliar ones, the intuitive type may guess rather than figure things our from specific details.

                          Figure 1
                     Jungian Polarities

                                Thinking
                                       |
  Sensation  _______     |________Intuition
                                       |
                                       |
                                  Feeling

  Sensation type people note every particular detail - form, colour, sound, and the like - all are clues which weave the fabric of their reality.  Everything has its place.  Shaping, organising and moving bodies and objects around is important and satisfying.  Everything has its cause and effect and if such are not apparent immediately, it is merely because insufficient efforts have been applied to fitting them into their proper order.

  Individuals will usually choose a profession and leisure activities in which their strengths serve them well and in which they find peers of like preferences.  Without realising it, they end up through these associates in loops of interactions which confirm their opinions in the correctness of their perceptions and beliefs about their preferred modes of experiencing the world.

  With each of these types experiencing the world mainly via their primary functions, they believe that that is the way the world is, or should be, if it were the best of all possible worlds.  Each usually has difficulty comprehending others whose primary functions are different from their own.  They are likely to be uncomfortable when having to deal with material inside themselves which is not in their primary mode.  Worse yet, they are likely to shut these materials away inside themselves, out of conscious awareness.  Jung called the parts which are hidden from awareness the 'shadow'.1

Artists meet in artists' pubs and medics gather in medics' clubs.

   Unconsciously, one may choose a friend or mate with opposite polar preferences because one finds it stimulating and balancing, but also because one can let the other express those aspects of oneself with which one is uncomfortable.  A husband (with primary thinking/sensation functions) will often let his wife (with primary intuitive/feeling functions) handle the decorating and entertainment and even the children; a wife will frequently leave the finances and mechanical repairs to her husband - each avoiding engagement of their 'shadow' or 'inferior' polarities.

  Most people who elect to study and work in academic or industrial scientific pursuits are superior in thinking and sensation functions.  This means that academics such as doctors and nurses often will be uncomfortable with material that relates to feelings and intuitions - which are, respectively, their inferior functions.

It is impossible to know the taste of the fruit of the cactus from descriptions of the taste of the fruit of the cactus.

  Jungian polarities relate to healing in several ways.  First, scientists will have difficulty grasping that which pertains to 'clinical intuitive hunches', energy impressions, spirituality and other human experiences that cannot be measured or recorded on instruments.  If it cannot be spelled out clearly, measured, and repeatedly and reliably reproduced, its existence for them is more than just questionable.  Understanding, or even becoming aware of these impressions would demand the activation of their inferior (intuitive/feeling) functions to perceive and appreciate these factors.  It is thus hard for them to accept that such material is worth considering.  This is an enormous barrier to their comprehension of healing because many dimensions of healing are difficult or impossible to put into words.  They can only be perceived and appreciated through experiencing them.

  Second, they would not even want to invest of themselves in exploring these realms, as this would require the activation of those shadow functions with which they are uncomfortable.  It is thus easy for them to accept or invent reasons to protect their intellectual constructs.  Third, assuming that intuitive functions are present in everyone and seeping via unconscious mental processes into conscious awareness, these intuitive perceptions likewise are lurking also in those whose superior functions are sensation and thinking - though they are usually suppressed below conscious awareness.  These types would then have to work extra hard in their minds to repress and deny awareness or validation of these inner aspects of themselves which make them uncomfortable.  Far easier to denigrate and reject that which a healer presents than to explore within oneself why one is uncomfortable with it.  Such people will distance themselves from healers and anything to do with them so that their shadow sides are not roused to awareness, much less confronted.  (Such processes may serve to explain the vehemence in the objections of some opponents of healing.  It may be to protect themselves from awareness of their underdeveloped, inferior, shadow functions.)

  Conversely, healers (who are strong in intuition and feeling) are not strong in analysing the processes of healing, in dissecting them with the tools of linear language, or in seeking ways to bring energy impressions into conformation with medical diagnoses.  Healers may have difficulty understanding why doctors have to gather many instances of healing successes in order to be convinced that healing is effective.  Healers can perceive this intuitively and are satisfied with the inner knowing of the rightness of their perceptions.

  Healers' shadow functions are often thinking and sensation, and healers are equally uncomfortable in activating these aspects of themselves.  For instance, healers might learn from medics to clarify through carefully thought out and tested analyses to what degree their intuitive impressions may be valid.  In my own study of healers' intuitive diagnostic abilities I found that each healer has only a partial view of the problems of the healee.  I asked several healers simultaneously to observe individual persons and give their intuitive impressions.  The healers were most surprised to find that their impressions differed widely from each other.  Yet the people being observed agreed that most of the varied impressions were accurate.  This means that each healer is perceiving a slice of the picture but not the entire picture.  When several healers observed the same person simultaneously, each obtained distinctly differing impressions of the person's problems.  The differences were much more pronounced than the overlaps.  Few healers appreciate this.  Most believe that their limited impressions are more comprehensive than they really are.  It is in ways like these that the thinking and sensation functions may contribute to the help healers can offer.

  Several of the following articles in the Newsletter illustrate some of the interplays between the thinking/ sensation and feeling/ intuitive modes of relating to healing.

  In Eastern Europe healers are being integrated with medical practice at a great pace.  In Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Russia the healers who wish to work with doctors are studying anatomy, physiology and other subjects which help them to have a common language with the doctors.

  In the UK and in some of the Eastern countries there are now numbers of doctors who are developing their own intuitive gifts.  See the article of Dr Dimiter Genov, for instance, in this Newsletter.

  Healees, healers and doctors will benefit from all of these developments.

References:

1. Johnson, Robert A. Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche, HarperSanFrancisco 1991   ISBN 0-06-250505-X
 

You may quote from or reproduce these editorial clips if you include the following credits and email contact:
Copyright © Daniel J. Benor, M.D. 1993 Reprinted with permission of the author P.O. Box 76 Bellmawr, NJ 08099 www.WholisticHealingResearch.com   DB@WholisticHealingResearch.com 

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