cover image The Theft of the Spirit: A Journey to Spiritual Healing

The Theft of the Spirit: A Journey to Spiritual Healing

Carl A. Hammerschlag. Simon & Schuster, $18 (191pp) ISBN 978-0-671-78023-4

Hammerschlag ( The Dancing Healers ), for 14 years Chief of Psychiatry with the Indian Health Service, explains in this well-told memoir how he learned from Native Americans to make use of the energy source within ourselves for healing. If the author's explanation of the science of psychoneuroimmunology--which suggests that ``what you know matters less than what you feel''--is thin, his anecdotes are telling. One patient suffering from clenched jaws lost his pain and his anger after climbing a mountain and screaming obscenities. Hammerschlag recalls how a Native American healer, in teaching him to pray, caused him to lose his cynicism, and how the wishes of dying children remind us how to dream. His musings sometimes stray from the Native American base, but they include worthwhile advice: people should learn to find joy in small, daily things, and doctors should be wary that medical jargon obscures human feelings. Hammerschlag concludes wth a somber warning from the Hopi people, who predict that our ``obsession with seeking material goods'' will lead to our ruin. (July)