Spiritualizing American Medicineby Maurie D. Pressman, M.D.
The necessary, absolutely essential, spiritualization of America is reflected in the necessary and oncoming spiritualization of American medicine. I see so much that is beside the point, costly, wrong and impotent in its results. I see this as I practice psychiatry and at the borderline between general medicine and psychology. I see the massive materialization of American medical thought, and this is reflected in our society at large. I grieve for it and am inwardly enraged. I see that there is so much in the suppressed life-flow of a patient which is unrecognized and goes on and on and on to create suffering. Unrecognized -- why? Because our attention is on the physical manifestation and not the subtle realms wherein the life blood of spirit and soul flows. Let me give you some examples: I have seen a lady, age 63, who suffers from environmental allergy. This means that she is allergic to so many, many things in the environment. And she has been all over the United States seeking cures. She is the patient of a very good doctor in alternative medicine, and has tried at first this remedy for allergy and then the next. Finally after some years she was sent to me. She appeared to be a very hale, hearty and well-met woman who came along with her husband who stayed in the room with her. The two were obviously a good pair, a love pair. But her suffering was the center point of the interview, and, no doubt, of much of their lives. She told me about her allergies, and how she couldn't sleep, and this medicine and that medicine. She told me, too, how she was encouraged when the doctor found that he could test one allergen (the substance causing allergy) against another by the use of kinesiology, meaning how it made the muscular strength of an arm strong or weak simply by holding the substance in the hand. I heard this litany of events, and asked if she did not have any worries. She said, "Oh yes, I have a 35-year-old son who hasn't found himself, and a daughter who is about to get married for the second time, with whom I am, sad to say, somewhat distant." And so it went -- a cheery, stoic litany of events of her life, focused on allergy, allergy, allergy. And then I asked about her children, how many children did she have. She said, "I used to have three." "Used to?" "Yes," and here the tears began to show and the softening eyes. "When he was three years old, he fell out of the car. My husband was driving. We both saw him run over." And then the grief poured out -- and then she struggled and suppressed it. I learned that she was so overcome that she had to give her nine-month-old child, her daughter, over to the care of her own mother for the next two years. And so the child and grandmother bonded, and this is the child, the daughter with whom she has a distant and somewhat lost relationship. All of these hidden griefs had never been explored or even exposed. And yet they are, I am sure, the emotional shrapnel which keeps pressing forth and keeps pressing forth, to find expression only in allergy. And this shrapnel must come out, this emotional cyst must be relieved, this emotional energy must be evacuated and allowed to flow as part of life itself in order to restore the whole person. It is inevitably true that when this is done the grief and sadness over the lost child will not disappear but will mellow and become a part of the whole person, and not need to be expressed in this everlasting predisposition to allergy. I have seen this in another environmentally allergic patient whom I knew well. She was a woman who had to be confined because she was allergic to everything. Not only was she confined but her entire family as well, for they had to change the table, they had to make sure the house was sterile, they had to be careful that such and such wasn't around. She was homebound and could not travel for pleasure, go to concerts or elsewhere. She had visited specialists all over the world seeking a cure, and with tremendous and tenacious courage pursued one physical cure after another. She came to me and I found her to be a woman wrapped in a sarcophagus of defense against emotion. In fact, when I asked about her emotions she asked, "What are emotions?" And she asked it in all sincerity. Through the years, her sarcophagus has softened. It has become a normal skin. And the emotional outflow which was otherwise suppressed has come forth as an extraordinary well of frustrated love and loneliness. This frustration of love and loneliness has now turned into a givingness and an artistry of emotion and paintbrush which has allowed her to manifest as a person of extraordinary gift and extraordinary givingness. And what does this say about the spiritualization of American medicine? It is necessary. And when it arrives it will have turned the patient, and ultimately society itself, from a materially-oriented, hardened and less and less human society, and patient-doctors and doctor-patients into those who again have the empathic bond with each other, and who will lead society into the new race of men/women. It is good to remember the poem from A Course in Miracles:
I'm here only to be truly helpful;
Maurie D. Pressman, M.D. is the co-author (with Patricia Joudry) of Twin Souls: A Guide to Finding Your True Spiritual Partner, published by Carol Southern Books, an imprint of Crown Publishers, New York. Dr. Pressman is Emeritus Chairman of Psychiatry at the Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Temple University Health Sciences Center. He is Medical Director at the Center for Psychiatric Wellness, clinics that operate in Philadelphia and Haddonfield, N.J. These clinics bridge traditional and spiritual psychotherapy. Dr. Pressman can be reached at 200 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106; telephone 215-922-0204.
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