Anthropology of Symbolic Healing [and Comments and Reply]

Abstract

A number of investigators are agreed that the popular medical systems of tribal, peasant, and allied peoples are "effective." Most of the literature closely examining that effectiveness focuses on the ethnopharmacological dimensions of the healing systems and generally ignores psychosocial factors. Recent developments in psychophysiology may offer insights into these neglected areas. The specific idea to be examined here is that successful "general medical treatment," or "symbolic healing," by either the shaman or physician, is based in part on a psychosocial mobilization of the patient's biochemical response system. Moreover, it is argued that to account fully for these processes we must reconceptualize the character of the human organism; a unitary alternative to standard Western Cartesian dualism (mind vs. body) is proposed, based on a model derived from recent research in neuroendocrinology. This model can be the basis for a nonreductionist theory of medical effectiveness needed to account for a series of observations (derived from both anthropological and medical contexts) which seem to transcend the explanatory powers of the traditional reductionist biomedical model.