Customer Reviews

Spirits with Scalpels: The Cultural Biology of Religious Healing in Brazil

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I came to this book with no background in anthropology, but with interest in the effects of culture on health care delivery. I found the book fascinating and thought provoking.

Spirits with Scalpels is clearly the culmination of years of study, research (armchair and adventurous), personal reflection, and attentiveness to readers' needs for clarity and relevance.

The stories ("data" to academics) are fascinating and disturbing. As a person rooted in Western European culture, I don't want to believe them; they challenge everything I think I've learned about how the world works. Greenfield seems to have fought the evidence also, but ended up with no way to deny what he saw.

Greenfield's theoretical hypothesis is compelling, although difficult for a lay person to grasp fully. The aspect that struck me as completely fresh was about the role of culture. The mind/body connection is in mainstream thinking now, but Greenfield's contention that the concept of "mind" is typically limited to individual thought and experience, as opposed to culturally transmitted knowledge, struck me as a fresh insight. The idea is so obviously true that one wonders why no one has spoken of it in this context before. Greenfield makes a powerful case for including culture in the search for explanations of experience and the development of healing techniques.

The value of the healing practices described is so evident that I wish we could all learn how utilize them. But Greenfield is clear that they are rooted in the cultures that created them and difficult to export. Perhaps further research will find ways.

Greenfield offers a carefully documented, plausible theory that expands mainstream thinking about mind/body interaction. I hope the medical and academic communities contribute further testing and analysis. Meanwhile, I think other lay readers will find this book absorbing and important.