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Love, Medicine & Miracles: Lessons Learned about Self-Healing from a Surgeon’s Experience with Exceptional Patients
By Bernie S. Siegel, M.D. Perennial Library, New York. 1988, 239 pages, $ 11.20.
We cannot deny that even in our daily conversations, the word cancer has a disruptive impact on many individuals. It scares us because it might affect any of us at any time of our life and turn us into another potential victim. This book is designed to shift our perspective and change the concept of the disease from being something over which we have little or no control regarding its beginning or ending. Throughout its chapters, the author uses his experiences with different patients, literature and empirical findings to support the possibility and the effectiveness of a different approach to cancer. Such a difference is what distinguishes exceptional patients from those who are just cancer patients. These patients are described by the author as people with hope and sense of humour, people who are able to love unconditionally and who also feel the love of their relatives.
But how can all this become possible? What difference can one’s personality make over one’s physical condition? The author answers these questions in the first section of his book, called Minding the Body. Its third chapter (Disease and the Mind) is particularly helpful in explaining the general link existing between mind and body. This chapter, although the most biologically based of the book, is easy to understand and provides the reader with a clear sense of the potential impact that we have over our physical condition. The relationship that exists between our cognitive and emotional life, and the immunological system is portrayed with its positive and negative possible consequences.
The formerly mentioned link between mind and body implies a dramatic change in the patient’s responsibility towards himself or herself. The cancer patient is no longer a sick passive subject to be healed. Now the patient has not only the possibility but also the responsibility of making his or her own decisions in order to be healed. We should notice at this point the intentionality of the author’s use of the word healing instead of cure. The healing process is the final goal, a holistic approach to the patient’s health. Such differentiation enables patients to be involved into this process, which may have, as a secondary gain, the patient’s cure. This path has to begin with the patient’s sense of hope, which as the author explains is always possible if it is the patient who establishes one’s own goals. This feeling has to be supported by the physician, and also demanded from him or her in case of its lacking. All these issues are illustrated in the following chapters: The Privileged Listener, The Healing Partnership (appropriate attitudes of the caring system), and The Will to Live.
The latter also includes the author’s basic questions about the psychogenic factors of the illness: Do you want to live to be one hundred? What happened to you in the year or two before your illness? What does the illness mean to you? Why did you need the illness? All those questions are directed to the patient’s better understanding of the personal factors that assisted the development of such disease, as well as those which might be maintaining it. The author also explains some ways of obtaining this information when it is only expressed in an unconscious way by the patient’s drawings. Such interpretations may facilitate the access to the patient’s fears and also to their perception of the illness and its treatment. However, these techniques require some knowledge about the covert meaning of their drawings, which is not usually included within the medical staff’s curriculum.
And now is the time for the patient to take his or her responsibility. The first steps are described in the chapter, Beginning the Journey. It recommends the patient’s selection of his or her own treatment choices. Other suggestions in the chapter are: minimizing side effects by the positive trust in the benevolence of the treatment, following an appropriate diet, exercising and letting the child inside every patient play and laugh as much as possible.
The author also suggests utilizing the congnitive and creative aspects of our minds in a more conscious and thoughtful manner to help ourselves in the following chapter: Focusing the Mind for Healing.. This chapter explains different methods of having our mind working, such as relaxation, mediation, visualization and hypnosis. Some of these techniques are practically illustrated in the book’s appendix.
The healing process explained in this book basically deals with the promotion of four faiths: faith in oneself, one’s doctor, one’s treatment, and one’s spirituality. Those are the basis of the process of Becoming Exceptional (chapter eight), the basis of the survivor’s personality.
The book’s final chapter (Love and Death) deals with our ultimate fear, death. The author explains the possibility of hope within this last step, and describes the social nature of the process. This involves the feelings of the caregivers and the family of the patient.
This book may be used at any time in the process of facing an impairing disease. This is true since it offers appropriate suggestions for the various stages of facing these kinds of diseases, especially cancer. However, the best use of this book requires its entire reading, as it’s sequentially organized in order to facilitate the reader’s understanding of his or her implication in the healing process. Its internal organization also allows a better acceptance of the suggested process, as it starts by suggesting behavioural techniques and then those requiring a higher level of insight. Such division also allows different approaches of the book within the psychotherapy. The latter is true since the psychotherapist may suggest the patient read different chapters depending on his or her needs and his or her possible level of insight and his or her medical condition.
Guidance from a psychotherapist during the patient’s reading of the book is highly recommended as some of its affirmations may appear dogmatic at times and might develop a sense of failure in some patients. This is because they may not achieve the same results that some of the patients used as examples in the book. The sense of responsibility for one’s own disease needs to be also carefully monitored by the therapist, in order to avoid the patient’s blaming him or herself. Although its content is easy to understand, the reading level required makes it inappropriate for children, although it may be a great help and guidance for their older relatives.
The main limitation of this book is the lack of scientific validation for some of its assertions. Although the book is full of n=1 experiments in which the subjects significantly help his or her healing process it does not seem to be enough. On the other hand, this book may help to instil hope in patients as well as the sense of universality of their feelings. These two factors have been validated rigorously and scientifically as some of the main factors in the therapeutic process. In conclusion, this book helps the patient to reorganize his or her conceptualization of the disease and his or her role in it, doing so in a peaceful and caring manner.