HEALING AND MEDICINE: ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE IN THE NEW AGE

Healing is a profoundly cultural activity. The labeling and treating of a disease reflect a culture's deepest understandings of the causal powers affecting human well-being. For this reason, the notion of orthodoxy pertains to medical systems as surely as it does to religious or political traditions. Ever since the Enlightenment, medical orthodoxy has been defined by a commitment to the causal role of "material" factors in the etiology of disease. Western medical science thus emerged in direct opposition to the pre-Enlightenment worldview within which the church supplied culturally compelling explanations of nonmaterial or spiritual causes of disease (e.g., sin or spirit possession), as well as corresponding strategies for therapeutic intervention (e.g., confession or exorcism). The continual successes of medical science have understandably garnered wide cultural support for its underlying worldview. As a consequence, most educated Westerners have implicitly endorsed a clear-cut division of labor whereby religion continues its age-old practice of the cure of souls, while scientific medicine uses its secular methods for healing the body.

The fact that a wide array of contemporary medical systems continue to espouse theories that defy scientific orthodoxy is therefore of particular interest to religious and cultural historians. Popular interest in alternative healing systems, such as holistic healing methods, twelve-step programs, and Asian systems for self-purification, seems to indicate that a fairly large number of Westerners subscribe to beliefs that belong neither to science nor to the more genteel theologies of our mainstream churches. Because these unorthodox healing systems contradict the materialistic assumptions underlying medical science, they are often taken to be propounding irrational understandings of health and healing. Yet, strictly speaking, any healing system is rational insofar as its methods of treatment are logically entailed by its fundamental premises or assumptions about the nature of disease. We might, for example, recognize at least four different types of explanations that could "rationally" be used to describe the cause of disease and, therefore, healing: physiological, environmental, attitudinal or psychological, and spiritual or metaphysical (i.e., caused by the activity of entities or forces that are considered to be both extrasomatic and extrapsychological). Those propounding "metaphysical-cause" explanations of healing are thus not necessarily less rational than those engaged in medical science. They are, however, advancing an ontological claim concerning the existence of causal forces not recognized by contemporary scientific theory.

Alternative healing systems thrive in contemporary culture precisely owing to their unorthodox articulation of a religiously charged interpretation of reality. Indeed, from a cross-cultural perspective it is clear that one of the most important functions of healing rituals is their capacity to induce an existential encounter with a sacred reality. In traditional societies, healing rituals involve participants in the reenactment of cosmological dramas: the shaman is both a healer and mediator between the divine and human realms. And in the case of Christianity, Jesus' healing was thought to be a sign of his divine nature and has subsequently been institutionalized as a function of Christian proclamation and ministry. Yet, with the gradual divorce of physical healing from the church's routine activities, this means of introducing individuals to a higher spiritual reality necessarily shifted to "alternative" religious and medical traditions, such as those found in the New Age movement.

Health and Healing in New Age Metaphysics

The term New Age defies strict definition. One can, however, identify many of the basic themes in today's alternative spiritual practices by tracing their historical origin in a cluster of nineteenth-century "metaphysical movements." Transcendentalism, Swedenborgianism, mesmerism, Mind Cure, New Thought, Spiritualism, and Theosophy all claimed to have made bold new discoveries concerning humanity's connection with a higher spiritual order. Their teachings especially appealed to progressive-minded persons who yearned to reconcile their scientific and religious interests within a single metaphysical system.

Common to these nineteenth-century metaphysical movements was their belief in the lawful "correspondence" between the many dimensions that make up the universe. Closely connected with this doctrine of correspondence was a corollary belief in the possibility of spiritual "influx." That is, it was believed that when a particularly harmonious relationship or rapport is achieved between two dimensions, energies from the "higher" dimension flow automatically into—and exert positive influence within—the "lower" dimension. Each of the United States' many metaphysical systems brought a distinct vocabulary to the explanation of these twin doctrines of correspondence and influx. The American public, however, took little effort to discriminate between these metaphysical teachings and gradually blended them together to create a form of unchurched spirituality that might be termed harmonial piety. As described by religious historian Sydney Ahlstrom, harmonial piety consists of all forms of belief and practice predicated upon the assumption that physical health, spiritual composure, and even economic well-being flow automatically from a person's rapport with the cosmos. This harmonial piety, anchored as it was in metaphysical understandings of the correspondence and influx, defined the core commitments of the New Age movement that came into cultural prominence during the 1970s and 1980s. Contemporary systems of alternative healing, such as chiropractic, twelve-step programs, Therapeutic Touch, crystal healing, and sundry holistic therapies, all in some way utilize notions of health and healing born of this metaphysical tradition.

The best example of how the twin doctrines of correspondence and influx gave rise to alternative medicine is the gradual diffusion of mesmerism into the vocabulary of middle-class Americans. Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), a Viennese physician, claimed to have detected the existence of a superfine substance or fluid that had until then eluded scientific notice. Mesmer referred to this invisible fluid as animal magnetism, owing to the fact that it is found in all living creatures and seems to respond to the influence of magnets. He postulated that animal magnetism permeates the physical universe. He further conjectured that it forms the medium through which forces of every kind—light, heat, magnetism, electricity—pass as they travel from one physical object to another. If for any reason an individual's supply of animal magnetism was thrown out of equilibrium, one or more bodily organs would consequently be deprived of sufficient amounts of this vital force and would begin to falter. "There is," Mesmer reasoned, "only one illness and one healing." Therefore, because any and all illness can ultimately be traced to a disturbance in the body's supply of animal magnetism, medical science can be reduced to a set of simple procedures aimed at supercharging a patient's nervous system with this mysterious life-giving energy.

Mesmer and his followers were intrigued by the fact that their patients routinely entered into a hypnotic-like trance as magnets were passed over their bodies in an effort to induce the inflow of animal magnetism into their physical systems. "Mesmerized" patients fell into a peaceful trance and, upon awakening, pronounced themselves cured of their physical and emotional ailments. Many mesmerized patients also displayed paranormal mental powers, such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and even communication with the spirit world. Proponents extolled mesmerism as a spiritual technique for producing the very condition of "correspondence" that transcendentalists and Swedenborgians had already claimed makes people susceptible to the influx of the currents of "universal being." The mesmerists thus succeeded in giving succinct medical expression to the harmonial vision. Illness was understood to be the lack of mental or psychological correspondence with higher spiritual dimension. Healing simply requires the use of physical and psychological techniques for reestablishing this correspondence and thereby permitting the inflow of the subtle energies that impart vitality and progressive movement throughout the universe.

One American mesmerist, Phineas P. Quimby (1802–1866), reasoned that people's thoughts function something like shunting valves that either connect them with or close them off from animal magnetism, which he variously referred to as "vital force" or "divine spirit." He concluded that "disease is the effect of a wrong direction given to the mind." If people think spiritually and optimistically, they remain inwardly receptive to the spiritual world and thereby maintain physical vigor. If, however, they become embroiled in pessimism, materialism, or fear, they fall out of harmony with higher spiritual influences and fall victim to physical disease. Quimby taught thousands of patients that by making appropriate adjustments in their own thoughts they could establish rapport with the very spiritual power that makes for health and overall prosperity. One such patient, Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910), transformed Quimby's teachings into Christian Science. Others, including Warren Felt Evans (1817–1889), expanded Quimby's teachings into what became known as the Mind Cure (or New Thought) movement. The latter advocated not only positive thinking but also the cultivation of certain mystical states to reestablish inner correspondence with higher spiritual realms (and the healing energies that flow automatically once such correspondence is established). In so doing, advocates of Mind Cure and New Thought injected a metaphysical vocabulary into popular American culture that would be rediscovered in the last decades of the twentieth century by proponents of New Age healing systems.

Mesmerism, as with other metaphysical movements such as Spiritualism and Theosophy, was thus a forerunner of the many New Age healing systems proclaiming belief in the causal power of "subtle energies." Historian Catherine Albanese suggests that belief in the subtle energies of spirit is the most distinctive feature of New Age spirituality. In the New Age movement, to be spiritual is equivalent to being sensitive to subtle energies and responding to them both by cultivating states of inner receptivity and by cultivating mental attitudes that utilize these energies to create bodily and worldly prosperity. The sustained presence of metaphysical healing systems in the United States thus goes well beyond the explanation typically given by social scientists when they draw attention to the fact that these systems treat the whole person (as opposed to scientific medicine's tendency to treat relatively isolated biophysical symptoms). Indeed, the ongoing popularity of metaphysical New Age systems is rooted squarely in their ability to bring explicitly religious understandings to the issue of health and healing.

New Age Energy Medicine

The metaphysical notions of correspondence and influx have supported a variety of healing systems based on belief in the existence and healing power of subtle spiritual energies. A perfect example can be found in the emergence of the alternative healing system that has gained the widest following, chiropractic medicine. Its founder, Daniel David Palmer (1845–1913), had studied both Spiritualism and mesmerism before concluding that there is a vital energy at work in the universe that is the ultimate source of the body's health and vitality. This energy, which he termed Innate, is itself a segment of god or the universal intelligence that fills the universe. Palmer reasoned that humans remain in perfect health so long as this vital energy flows from the brain to the various organs of the body. But when the flow of this energy is blocked due to misaligned spinal vertebrae, one or more parts of the body will begin to falter. Palmer, like Mesmer, thus concluded that there is one ultimate cause of illness and one ultimate cause of all healing—the restoration of the flow of subtle spiritual energies. Palmer called his new medical philosophy chiropractic from the Greek words cheiro (hand) and prakitos (done or performed). At least nine million persons visit the forty thousand chiropractic physicians currently practicing in the United States. And although the majority of these patients receive little or no instruction about the healing power of Innate, chiropractic medicine nonetheless remains a principal source from which millions of Americans have been introduced to the healing power of spiritual energies not recognized by scientific medicine.

A second example of New Age "energy medicine" is the system of Therapeutic Touch. Dolores Krieger, a nursing instructor at New York University and student of Theosophical teachings, working with Dora Kunz, former president of the Theosophical Society in America, developed a healing technique predicated upon the existence of a universal energy underlying all life processes. Krieger explains that this energy, which she refers to by using the Hindu term prana, naturally instills a higher spiritual dimension into every living organism. So long as individuals remain inwardly receptive to the inflow of this vital energy they will remain healthy; illness ensues when prana is no longer flowing freely into the physical system.

Recapitulating Mesmer's science of animal magnetism in nearly every detail, Krieger devised a system of practices for nurses to use in their efforts to "channel" prana into patients. She explains that healers must themselves become inwardly receptive to the flow of this spiritual energy. Newcomers to the field are guided along an "archetypal journey," whereby they learn to explore the farther reaches of the psyche. Nurses trained in medical science are encouraged to read books on yoga, Tibetan mysticism, and the relationship between the "new physics" and Eastern religious traditions. The goal is to help them open up their own internal energy centers (referred to as chakras, a term drawn from esoteric forms of yoga and largely introduced to Western culture through Theosophy-inspired movements) and to become more receptive to the inflow of prana into their own systems so that they might in turn channel it to their patients.

This interest in helping persons release subtle healing energies by opening their chakras is common to most forms of New Age medicine. For example, Caroline Myss has synthesized her knowledge of Theosophy, the work of Dolores Krieger, and the trance-channeled wisdom of A Course in Miracles into a healing philosophy predicated upon the causal role of the chakras. Myss has published several best-selling books and videotapes that explain how each chakra is associated with specific emotional issues. By helping people gain insight into their "energy anatomy," Myss believes they can learn to open their chakras and facilitate the flow of the energy needed to sustain physical health, emotional well-being, and sustained growth toward higher levels of spiritual consciousness.

Other New Age energy healers make use of rock crystals. Belief in the healing properties of crystals is frequently associated with shamanic traditions, including those of Native Americans. Western interest in the occult powers of crystals, however, is more directly linked with Baron Charles von Reichenbach's studies in the 1840s and 1850s. Reichenbach took up the scientific study of Mesmer's theory of animal magnetism and ultimately devised his own theory concerning the power of quartz crystals to restore the flow of a subtle healing energy throughout the body. Today's crystal healers are likely to extol the ability of quartz crystals to capacitate and refract the spiritual energies that enter humans through their chakras. Many New Age healers combine the use of crystals with various forms of meditation, believing that the crystals amplify the mind's innate powers to make contact with the higher spiritual dimensions from which spiritual healing energies flow.

The Holistic Health and Human Potential Movements

Ever since Quimby and the nineteenth-century Mind Cure movement, there has been an identifiable subculture in Western nations that has explored novel systems for integrating the mind, body, and spirit. The 1970s witnessed a revival of such interest as a variety of new systems appeared, all aiming to help persons achieve optimal health and all rife with imagery drawn from Western metaphysical traditions. Many of these systems sought to distinguish themselves from scientific medicine by invoking the notion of "holistic healing." Part of the appeal of holistic approaches to healing was their pronounced concern for individuals as both physical and emotional beings, in contrast to the depersonalized nature of many medical treatments. Yet many holistic healing systems have gone further still and addressed themselves to the treatment of the body, mind, emotions, and spirit. The introduction of the term spirit alongside body, mind, and emotions takes holistic conceptions of healing well beyond psychosomatic models and stakes out a bold metaphysical understanding of reality. In some cases this amounts to little more than a romanticization of the body's self-regenerative and self-reparative tendencies. Yet in other cases it also includes a bolder ontological claim that the whole of nature is suffused with an immanent spiritual force. And, in still other cases, metaphysical conceptions of the human psyche are invoked to suggest the human system is susceptible to the influx of higher spiritual powers.

Among the best-known spokespersons for holistic healing in the late twentieth century were Norman Cousins and Bernard Siegel. Both offered inspiring visions of humanity's potential for self-regeneration that broadly hinted at the mind's susceptibility to influence from metaphysical forces. Cousins, for example, suggested that his studies of the mind's full potential to avail itself of cosmic healing energies also suggests new directions and new possibilities in future human evolution. Siegel was even more forceful in linking holistic healing with a decidedly metaphysical conception of the human condition. He had cancer patients read books on meditation and psychic phenomena so that they might awaken their own latent abilities to tap into higher healing energies. According to Siegel, we are not far from the creation of a "theophysics" that will demonstrate how all people have a divine energy available to them through a collective unconscious, and if they open themselves to this energy there is no limit to the health and vitality they can express in their lives.

Perhaps the most successful of all holistic health systems is Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and the many twelve-step programs it has launched. The founder of AA, Bill W., appropriated the psychological theories of both William James and Carl Jung to explain how every person might make inner connection with a higher spiritual power. Describing AA as "a spiritual rather than a religious program," Bill W. contended that the restoration of personal wholeness is impossible without letting go of our personal will and finding inner harmony with a spiritual power he preferred to describe in metaphysical rather than biblical terms.

There are numerous other varieties of holistic systems that utilize metaphysical explanations of the causal forces responsible for healing: acupuncture, iridology, massage and various forms of "bodywork," meditation and visualization, Ayurvedic medicine, shiatsu, transpersonal psychologies, and New Age shamanism. Many of these might also be described as constituting the Human Potential movement that also has roots in the Western esoteric and metaphysical traditions. Common to these systems is the belief that conformity to societal expectations comes at a price. Modern individuals have lost awareness of their deeper selves and their deeper potentials for creativity and transcendence. Full human health therefore requires far more than just eliminating illness. It also requires utilizing physical and psychological techniques for promoting awareness of the full range of one's creative powers, including the power for complete spiritual enlightenment and union with the godhead.

Alternative Healing, Alternative Spirituality

Most of the alternative healing systems that have attracted popular followings proclaim the existence and causal power of spiritual energies unrecognized by either scientific or religious orthodoxy. Adherents of these groups are typically white, urban or suburban, and have more education and higher incomes than the general population. The impress of secularization has made biblical religion problematic to them, and yet scientific rationality has failed to sustain their general optimism or to meet their desire for experiential connection with the sacred. Alternative healing systems have thrived in a particular cultural niche, appealing to persons who yearn to find spiritual fulfillment while reluctant to join established religious institutions. Their doctrines (myths) and therapeutic techniques (rituals) function much like the initiation rites of archaic religions and mystery cults in that they provide an experiential encounter with a more-than-physical reality. Newcomers are helped to discard a no-longer functional identity and to discover new and unsuspected sources of comfort and power. The existence and continued popularity of New Age healing systems testifies to their enduring capacity to enable otherwise secular persons to symbolize what, at the deepest level of mystery, is the ultimate source and meaning of their lives.

See Also

Christian Science; Eddy, Mary Baker; New Age Movement; New Thought Movement; Spiritualism; Swedenborgianism; Theosophical Society; Transcendental Meditation.

Bibliography

Ahlstrom, Sydney. A Religious History of the American People. New Haven, 1972. Although known for its comprehensive treatment of "consensus religion" in the United States, the chapters on "Harmonial Religion since the Later Nineteenth Century" and "Piety for the Age of Aquarius" help situate the New Age movement in the larger sweep of American religious history.

Albanese, Catherine. "The Subtle Energies of the Spirit: Explorations in Metaphysical and New Age Spirituality." Journal of the American Academy of Religion 67 (1999): 305–326.

Eisenberg, David. "Unconventional Medicine in the United States: Prevalence, Costs, and Patterns of Use." New England Journal of Medicine 328 (1993): 246–252.

Fuller, Robert. Alternative Medicine and American Religious Life. New York, 1989.

Gevitz, Norman, ed. Other Healers: Unorthodox Medicine in America. Baltimore, 1988.

Hanegraaff, Wouter. New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought. Albany, N.Y., 1996.

McGuire, Meredith. Ritual Healing in Suburban America. New Brunswick, N.J., 1988.

Melton, J. Gordon, Jerome Clark, and Aidan Kelly, eds. New Age Encyclopedia. Detroit, 1990.

Robert C. Fuller (2005)