The destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits - not animals.
                                 - Winston Churchill

Remarkable recoveries have held great interest for me for nearly three decades. My initial focus was on remarkable improvements produced by spiritual healing, as in Therapeutic Touch, Healing Touch, Reiki, Qigong, Traditional healing interventions (e.g. Native American ceremonial healings) and Prayer Healing. These often have been labeled 'miraculous' healings in the popular press. Healers with strong gifts of healing may find them occurring too regularly in their practices to label them as such. In Healing Research, Volume 1, I review extensive scientific research (Popular Edition and (Professional Supplement) and anecdotal reports (Popular Edition) confirming that these remarkable recoveries occur with spiritual healing.

I do not believe in miracles, at least not defined in the conventional religious manner as divine disruptions of the natural order.  But if a miracle is defined as an infinitely improbable phenomenon, then our existence is a miracle, which no theory natural or supernatural will ever explain.
                                 - John Horgan

Conventional medicine views such unusual recoveries from illness as 'spontaneous remissions,' brought about by unknown processes of recuperation of the human organism. I have also thoroughly researched the vast potentials of human capacity for self-healing in Healing Research, Volume 2 (Popular and Professional editions). To some extent, all healings, by any modality, must involve activation of self-healing potentials and abilities.

I was excited in 1993 to find  an annotated bibliography of 3,000 reports of spontaneous remissions, gathered from 3,500 references in over 800 journals in 20 different languages by Brendan O'Regan and Caryl Hirshberg, titled Remarkable Recoveries. I found this collection utterly fascinating. There were tantalizing medical notes on remarkable spontaneous recoveries from cancers, skeletal deformities, hormonal abnormalities, and hundreds of other types of physical problems. However, these reports never included any in-depth considerations of psychological or spiritual issues that might have contributed to the unusual remissions from diseases - that in many cases were expected to be fatal; and conversely, reports from psychological literature rarely included medical details or documentations of the associated physical problems.

The situation has actually worsened in the years since the publication of this annotated bibliography. When I trained in medicine in the 1960s at the University of California, Los Angeles, we had a department of Psychosomatic Medicine. When people had physical symptoms combined with psychological symptoms, or when physical symptoms could not be explained by physical or laboratory examinations, a consultation from this department would often uncover stresses and psychological mechanisms that could explain the unusual symptoms. Psychotherapy could then often relieve the problems. Here is a typical example of the problems addressed by the doctors in Psychosomatic Medicine, in this case as a psychiatric consultation to the Neurology Department.

'Tom,' a 40 year-old married factory worker, was admitted for evaluation of weakness in his right hand and arm that were making it impossible for him to perform at his usual level of competence on the assembly line. Neurological examination was normal, with the exception of weakness in the muscles of his right hand, arm and shoulder. No peripheral nerve or muscle damage, no spinal or brain lesion could be identified. Psychosomatic consultation revealed that the weakness in this very meek and mild-mannered man had started following an uncharacteristic, major argument with his wife. In short, this was found to be a psychological weakness produced by Tom's unconscious mind to help him control the angry impulses he had been feeling, with a wish to strike his wife. The symptom also served to punish himself for having had this impulse. Brief psychotherapy resolved the symptoms.

There are no longer any departments of Psychosomatic Medicine in the United States, although the subject is to varying extents included in medical school curricula under headings such as Behavioral Medicine or Bio-Psycho-Social Medicine. This is a measure of how much further Western medicine has distanced itself from awareness of the mind-body connection. A Google search turns up only references to European and Japanese listings for Psychosomatic Medicine.


Reports on Remarkable Recoveries

References on self-healing