The most frequent discussions about healing have occurred in the layman’s literature (Benson, 1994; Cousins, 1993; Dossey, 1994; Frank, 1993; Jaffe, 2000; Locke & Colligan, 1996; Pearsall, 1997; Pelletier, 1997; Siegel, 1996). These books are often based on the author’s clinical experience with empirical data that are inappropriately used or of poor quality. Healing itself is not clearly defined. This literature is popular, apparently appealing to some intuitive sense of holistic healing.
Many of the ideas are worthy of note, but it is important not to accept them as accurate until they are scientifically tested. The data that have been used to support these theories often do not mention healing directly. Some examples of outcome measures were survival beyond two years, reduction of skin rashes or blood pressure, and increased hematocrit, cortisol or natural killer cells. Measures that seem more closely related to holistic healing, such as uncomplicated wound healing, quality of life after illness, and rate of physical recovery were less frequently used as outcome measures.
Even these measures tapped only part of the typical conceptualisations of holistic healing that included a broader range of emotional, cognitive, physiological and behavioural changes. Chapter III DESIGN OF THE STUDY Introduction A suitable design for exploring holistic healing from the perspective of the person in the mechanism of the health creation process is phenomenology. Phenomenology is the study of the essence of human experience (Solomon, 1980).
Phenomenology is based on careful consideration of rich complex data, using logic and insight (Cohen, 2001). The phenomenon studied need not be tangible in a physical sense as it can be such things as loving, thinking, imagining, calculating, or doubting. Healing falls somewhere between with both tangible and intangible elements. Cause and effect are not relevant, but it can be asked what the experience is of perceiving something apparently causing something else. One would not ask what causes healing; only what the experience of healing is.
As an approach to research, it is a way to stand back and watch, to break out of one’s familiar acceptance of the world, and to attain a state of wonder and understanding (Merleau-Ponty, 1992). History Spiegelberg (1992) divided the history of phenomenology into the preparatory phase, with Franz Brentano (1883-1917); the German phase, with Edmund Husserl (1888-1938) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976); and the French phase, with Gabriel Marcel (1889-1993), Jean-Paul Sastre (1905-1980), and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1928-2001).
Bretano (1874/1960) hoped to make psychology truly scientific and could not envision the study of psychology without mind perceptions. He introduced “intentionality” to differentiate psychological and physical phenomena. Psychological phenomenon included acts, both doing and states of consciousness. Reference to an object is the defining characteristic of anything psychological. There is “no hearing without hearing something, no believing without something believed, no hoping without something hoped, no striving without something striven, no joy without something we feel joyous about, etc.
”(Speilberg, 1992, p. 37). Husserl was the major impetus in the phenomenological movement. Brentano`s idea that one is conscious of something, not nothing, captivated his interest, motivating him to continue to explore “intentionality. ” He expanded “intentionality” to include “directedness of consciousness toward objects” (p. 107). He also expanded phenomenology so that intentionality was no longer the only distinguishing feature (Spielberg, 1992). Eidetic reduction to ascertain “cognitions of essence” as opposed to “matters of fact” became one of hisa greatest contributions (Husserl, 1938/1982, p.
xx). This reduction or bracketing was an attempt to view the phenomena of interest with a fresh view, doubting all prior suppositions about the phenomenon. Judgement was suspended in order to see the phenomenon as clearly as possible (Husserl, 1938/1982). Marcel, Sartre, and Heidegger all rejected reduction as Husserl envisioned it because they believed it was impossible to achieve (Solomon, 1990). This rejection of a key concept is not unusual as phenomenologists represent a divergent group of philosophers.
Merleau-Ponty retained reduction but changed it to become the means, not the ends. Reduction became a “loosening of our habitual ties with the world” to permit us to “discover the spontaneous surge of the life world” to permit us to “discover the spontaneous surge of the life world” (Spiegelberg, 1992, p. 534). Marleau-Ponty (1992) stressed the impossibility of total reduction. He also modified intentionality so that it became not only the structure of consciousness, but also our entire relation to the world (Spiegelberg, 1992).