Whole Healing

Harvard-trained physician Dacher advocates an unconventional approach to healing. His Whole Healing System, which he proclaims ""the medicine of the future,"" rests on four integrated systems: homeostasis, an automatic, internal balancing system within the organism; treatment, i.e., such external means as drugs, surgery or alternative therapies; mind/ body healing, growing from self-awareness and psychological development; and spiritual healing, based on a sense of wholeness developed through expansion of the consciousness. These concepts are developed in chapters that conclude with exercises called ""inner journeys,"" mostly rather demanding imaging sessions intended to provide readers with a direct experience of the ideas. To call this a step-by-step program is a stretch of the imagination. More polemic than programmatic, and more inspirational than instructional, the text argues that the principles of dynamism, holism and purposefulness that underlie Whole Healing are replacing the values of objectivism, determinism and positivism that underlie biomedicine. Absent solid evidence, hard-nosed scientific types will not be persuaded. (June)