Stanley Jackson MD, professor emeritus of psychiatry and of the history of medicine at Yale University and author of Care of the Psyche: A History of Psychological Healing published in 1999 by Yale University Press, surveyed the basic factors which constitute psychological healing over the centuries from classical Greek and Roman texts to modern psychotherapies. He discovered that these basic elements transcend space and time. Jackson noted:
“There is a bedrock to healing that is related to our shared human nature. Symptoms occur and a human being suffers. Doing what comes naturally, the sufferer reaches out for help...No matter how large man’s inhumanity to man might seem to loom, I would argue that most people have a fundamental tendency to respond with compassion and some inclination to be helpful. In almost any culture, certain persons have extended and developed this inclination, and so have become recognized as healers. The more severe or complex the sufferer’s symptoms are, the more likely that person is to consult someone designated a healer by that culture. Usually the sufferer has a story to tell the healer-what hurts, what is troubling, the nature of the suffering; and the healer listens and provides “witnessed significance” for the sufferer’s account...We see, at this rudimentary level, the basic role played by the talking, the listening, and the healer-sufferer relationship” (p. 384).
In regard to the importance of the relationship between sufferer and healer across centuries, Jackson pointed out:
“Although the healer-sufferer relationship has received much more attention as a therapeutic factor in more recent times, it has been a central element in most modes of psychological healing...themes of trust, sympathy, compassion, and hope have long been held to be significant; and attention to empathy has become a modern concern” (p. 385).
Human beings need other human beings. This need has served to develop the healing potential of the sufferer-healer relationship. Sufferers could “...confide their troubles and ease their sense of burden and distressing aloneness and could confess in a quest for forgiveness, an easing of a sense of guilt, and reconciliation with others...the opportunity to express themselves often brought cathartic or abreactive relief from emotional burdens” (p. 385).
In regard to logos (reason, understanding, insight, etc.), Jackson notes:
“Accordingly, explanations and interpretations have commonly had a place in healing modes over the centuries. The search for insight and self-understanding has often been emphasized. And self-observation has tended to be an element in those approaches which featured self-understanding. This group of elements has been crucial for many a sufferer in coming to a sense of “knowing” what all the suffering has been about; and ‘knowing’ has offered a way for sufferers to move from suffering helplessness to some sense of mastery and control over their lives” (pp. 385-386).
Jackson has applied his research on psychological healing across the centuries to contemporary medical practices as well as more psychological forms of intervention.
“We can readily see just what a central place the healer-sufferer relationship has in such concerns. Healers can put into practice various combinations of the basic elements which are rooted in that relationship--to provide an attentive, listening ear; to allow confiding, confessional, and cathartic moments; to comfort and console; to evoke and deal with emotions; to arouse and sustain hope; to provide thoughtful suggestion or persuasion; to integrate explanation or interpretation with these other ingredients; to promote self-understanding and the potential for mastering difficult illness-related situations....in general medical contexts as well...these factors will frequently not be sufficient, but that they will very frequently be necessary” (p. 391).
In the concluding passages of Jackson’s treatise on psychological healing over the centuries, he points out that healing, at its root, is a natural phenomenon, and that psychological healing plays a crucial role in healing despite the trends in contemporary medicine which emphasize technological advancements. Jackson concluded that the essence of the care of the psyche on the part of the healer includes:
“...a respectful and interested way of listening; a readily felt trustworthiness; a compassionate and sympathetic response to those who suffer; a capacity for arousing and sustaining hope; and a calm response to disturbing or frightening clinical states...Whether in earlier times or in our own era, suitably disposed healers have been instrumental in the sustaining and healing of many a sufferer through psychological means” (p. 392).
Brian Koehler PhD
New York University
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New York NY 10003
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brian_koehler@psychoanalysis.net
