Talking Cures And Placebo Effects

Download or read book Talking Cures and Placebo Effects written by David A. Jopling and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2008-05-29 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Psychodynamic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis have had to defend themselves from a barrage of criticisms throughout their history. In this book David Jopling argues that the changes achieved through therapy are really just functions of placebos that rally the mind's native healing powers. It is a bold new work that delivers yet another blow to Freud and his followers.

Download or read book Cure written by Jo Marchant and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2016-01-27 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rigorous, sceptical, deeply reported look at the new science behind the mind's extraordinary ability to heal the body. Have you ever felt a surge of adrenaline after narrowly avoiding an accident? Salivated at the sight (or thought) of a sour lemon? Felt turned on just from hearing your partner's voice? If so, then you've experienced how dramatically the workings of your mind can affect your body. Yet while we accept that stress or anxiety can damage our health, the idea of 'healing thoughts' was long ago hijacked by New Age gurus and spiritual healers. Recently, however, serious scientists from a range of fields have been uncovering evidence that our thoughts, emotions, and beliefs can ease pain, heal wounds, fend off infection and heart disease, even slow the progression of AIDS and some cancers. In Cure, award-winning science writer Jo Marchant travels the world to meet the physicians, patients and researchers on the cutting edge of this new world of medicine. We learn how meditation protects against depression and dementia, how social connections increase life expectancy, and how patients who feel cared for recover from surgery faster. We meet Iraq war veterans who are using a virtual arctic world to treat their burns and children whose ADHD is kept under control with half the normal dose of medication. We watch as a transplant patient uses the smell of lavender to calm his hostile immune system and an Olympic runner shaves vital seconds off his time through mind-power alone. Drawing on the very latest research, Marchant explores the vast potential of the mind's ability to heal, acknowledges its limitations, and explains how we can make use of the findings in our own lives. ‘A thought-provoking exploration of how the mind affects the body and can be harnessed to help treat physical illness, by an award-winning science journalist.’ Best Books of 2016, Australian Financial Review ‘A thought-provoking exploration.’ Best Books of 2016, Economist

Download or read book Talking Cures and Placebo Effects written by David A. Jopling and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-05-29 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Psychoanalysis has had to defend itself from a barrage of criticism throughout its history. Nevertheless, there are many who claim to have been helped by this therapy, and who claim to have achieved genuine insight into their condition. But do the psychodynamic or exploratory psychotherapies - the so-called talking cures - really help clients get in touch with their "inner", "real" or "true" selves? Do clients make important discoveries about the real causes of their behaviours, emotions, and personalities? Are their insights, and the psychodynamic interpretations offered them by their psychotherapists, true? Many think so. Talking Cures and Placebo Effects contests this view. It defends the unpopular hypothesis that therapeutic changes in the psychodynamic psychotherapies are sometimes functions of powerful placebos that rally the mind's native healing powers in much the same way that placebo pills rally the body's native healing powers; and that psychodynamic insights and interpretations are themselves placebos. Few clients know this, and fewer still are informed of the potential placebo effects at play in exploratory psychotherapy, and of the consequent risks of self-misinterpretation and self-deception. Thus does Talking Cures and Placebo Effects target a host of problems that lie at the very intersection of the epistemology, ethics, scientific status, and public accountability of the talking cures.

Download or read book Placebo Effects: The Meaning of Care in Medicine written by Pekka Louhiala and published by Springer. This book was released on 2020-04-08 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a perspective on the concepts placebo and placebo effects, which has been missing so far: a detailed analysis of the history of the terms, their current use, suggested alternatives and the implications of the conceptual confusion. Everybody knows something about placebos and placebo effects. If, however, people are asked to define the concepts, the spectrum becomes wide. Does 'placebo' refer to an inert treatment or does it cover all elements of the patient-physician-interaction except for pharmacological or other physiological mechanisms? Furthermore, if, by definition, a placebo has no effect, what sense does it make to talk about a 'placebo effect'? Even in scientific literature the concepts ‘placebo’ and ‘placebo effect’ are used in many senses and often in a confusing way. While this book discusses many issues which keep puzzling physicians, it also covers the historical developments of the concepts of placebo and placebo effect as well as the conceptual confusion in the definitions. This book is intended for physicians, philosophers, psychologists and any other people interested in placebos, placebo effects and the physician-patient relationship.

Download or read book The Healing Virtues written by Duff R. Waring and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-21 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Healing Virtues explores the intersection of psychotherapy and virtue ethics - with an emphasis on the patient's role within a healing process. It considers how the common ground between the therapeutic process and the cultivation of virtues can inform the efforts of both therapist and patient. The ethics of psychotherapy revolve partly around what therapists should or should not do as well as the sort of person that therapists should be: e.g., empathic, prudent, compassionate, respectful, and trustworthy. Contemporary practitioners have argued for therapist virtues that are relevant to assisting the patient's efforts in a healing process. But the ethics of a therapeutic dialogue can also revolve around the sort of person the patient should be. Within this book, Duff R. Waring argues that there is a case for patient virtues that are relevant to dealing with the problems in living that arise in psychotherapy, e.g., honesty, courage, humility, perseverance. The central idea is that treatment may need to build virtues while it ameliorates problems. Hence, the patient's work in psychotherapy can both challenge character strengths and result in their further development. The book is unique in bringing the topic of virtue ethics to the psychotherapeutic encounter, and will be of interest to psychotherapists, philosophers, and psychiatrists.

Download or read book Suggestible You written by Erik Vance and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2016 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Geographic's riveting narrative explores the world of placebos, hypnosis, false memories, and neurology to reveal the groundbreaking science of our suggestible minds. Could the secrets to personal health lie within our own brains? Journalist Erik Vance explores the surprising ways our expectations and beliefs influence our bodily responses to pain, disease, and everyday events. Drawing on centuries of research and interviews with leading experts in the field, Vance takes us on a fascinating adventure from Harvard's research labs to a witch doctor's office in Catemaco, Mexico, to an alternative medicine school near Beijing (often called "China's Hogwarts"). Vance's firsthand dispatches will change the way you think--and feel. Expectations, beliefs, and self-deception can actively change our bodies and minds. Vance builds a case for our "internal pharmacy"--the very real chemical reactions our brains produce when we think we are experiencing pain or healing, actual or perceived. Supporting this idea is centuries of placebo research in a range of forms, from sugar pills to shock waves; studies of alternative medicine techniques heralded and condemned in different parts of the world (think crystals and chakras); and most recently, major advances in brain mapping technology. Thanks to this technology, we're learning how we might leverage our suggestibility (or lack thereof) for personalized medicine, and Vance brings us to the front lines of such study.

Download or read book The Already Dead written by Eric Cazdyn and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-16 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers how a culture of crisis management&—what Cazdyn calls "the new chronic"&— has come to dominate all aspects of contemporary life, from biomedicine to economics to politics. Drawing from his own experiences battling leukemia and the subsequent effects of his illness on the process of becoming a Canadian citizen, Cazdyn unravels the logic of the new chronic where people find themselves suspended in a space between life and death.