psychiatry

[Guest guest]

I would be delighted to see Mr. Kapchuk fully defend his position on this

subject. Until then, I will have to concur with Flaws' assessment,

quoted below. We might otherwise ask whether the short lived prominence

of the school of purgation (founded by zhang zi he), which claimed to successfully

treat all disease with strong purging (through bowels, sweat and vomit)

is enough justification to support the modern practice of nature curists,

who all also embrace this idea.

It is often pointed out that if this school was valid, then it would

have remained prominent. The fact that it never achieved widespread

professional support is often used as a reason by chinese herbalists to

dismiss this approach to healing. Why doesn't the same

standard apply to psychiatry?

Rather than brushing aside the role of talk therapy in TCM, I am rather

asking for evidence to support a modality that is already widely used by

American practitioners as if it was a well documented part of traditional

practice, when this does not appear to be the case. In my experience,

psychoanalysis that continually stirs up emotions or dwells on childhood

developmental issues is an impediment to healing most of the time, not

an adjunct. Modern western culture puts way too much emphasis on

how one "feels"; I think this is one of our core social pathologies.

I agree totally with the nei jing admonition on the importance of shen

in healing, but from my perspective, most psychotherapy serves more to

disturb the shen, then calm it.

So I use herbs and acupuncture to regulate qi and shen; I counsel

patients about behavior, including the role of emotions in disease;

and when they are ready, I advise practices that reinforce this position,

such as qigong or other forms of yoga and meditation. A note of caution

though is that patients who are mentally imbalanced will often worsen from

qi gong if this therapy is introduced prematurely.

Flaws says (from http://www.bluepoppy.com/ubb/Forum2/HTML/000002.html),

"Further, I also think it is extremely important for students and practitioners

to have

direct, personal access to a wider selection of Chinese medical literature.

For instance,

Ted Kaptchuk, in his Preface or Introduction to Acupuncture in Practice,

mentions Wu

Kun's "Medicine Without Form" and Wu Ju-tong's use of the so-called "Divine

Method of

Incantation," both putative systems of Chinese psychotherapy. Reading

Ted's

reference to these, one might be tempted to think that these premodern

methods

were widely used, or that the premodern existence of these methods implies

some

deficiency within modern Chinese medicine. (italics mine: TL)

Personally, I don't know if they were or were not widely used during their

time. But

before I hold them out as evidence of the existence of premodern Chinese

medical

psychotherapy and, even further, use them as examples of something lacking

in

modern practice, I need to find out more about them. First I need to read

what Wu

Kun and Wu Ju-tong had to say for themselves, not just Ted's passing reference

to

them. Then I need to read what other Chinese doctors have said about what

Wu and

Wu said. Then I have to answer the question, "What happened to these

methodologies over time?" If they are no longer considered a part of standard

professional Chinese medicine, why not? If they truly provided some necessary,

extremely valuable service to consumers of professional Chinese medicine

(which I am

not saying they did not), why then do they appear to have died out within

professional

Chinese medicine? "

--

 

Chinese Herbal Medicine