51 of 60 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Confusing Message, February 9, 2008
Whenever a first-class scholar, like this one, writes a careful, data-based book, which is at the same time accessible to the intelligent lay person, we must be grateful.
This volume tells us much of the history, in the United States, of the various mind-over-body schemes: psychoanalysis, Transcendental Meditation, bio-feedback, Christian Science, and others. Nobody interested in modern American history can afford to ignore this story.
But I also found the book profoundly confusing. The author wants to tell us about these movements and how they were received by the public, but she has little interest, it seems, in the truth value behind the claims of these popular movements. Does bio-feedback, for instance, really help in reducing stress ? For that matter, is there such a thing as "stress" in the sense that the proponents of these movements have in mind ? Truth or untruth are things that hold little interest for this author.
Harrington generally tells the story of the beginnings of these movements as a series of successes, and then, for some reason, time and again, "things begin to unravel," as she has to state time and again. With all her sympathies for "mind-over-body," sympathies that dominate her "narratives" (a favorite phrase of hers), it turns out, generally, and in stark contrast to her enthusiasms, that things don't work out after all, and it would seem -- though she never says this -- that it's probably best to be cynical about the whole lot of these movements.
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15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A History Of Alternative Medicine, January 26, 2008
Anne Harrington has written a comprehensive account of the impact of the healing approaches outside mainstream medicine. Call it mind-body, call it new age, it is an approach that is as old as the Bible with the cures of Jesus. It is not new to our society. Her history traces the mind-body connection stretching from Bibical era to our own, with the bulk of the book focusing on the Age of Enlightenment forward. She has written this definitive history in an unbias and readable fashion .
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25 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A masterful synthesis, January 25, 2008
Professor Harrington provides a masterful synthesis of Mind-Body Medicine. I was a skeptical chemist who spent most of his working life in the midwest before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area. For five years I looked askance at the smorgasbord of alternative healing that flourishes here. Eventually a new wife persuaded me to try acupuncture for tennis elbow. I have not looked back. I claim no miracle cures but do now have the glimmerings of understanding my mind-body as a marvellously inter-connected system with endless possibilities for feedback from every sensory modality. Harrington has great understanding of the mind-body system. The rigor of her approach and the clarity of her writing style make The Cure Within both thought provoking and a delight to read.
Lance Reynolds
Alameda, CA
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