Healing

When we say healing, most people think “biomedicine,” which targets mainly disease and physical injury—definitely bad stuff. However, there are other serious afflictions, not targeted by biomedicine, which have effectively been targeted by social healing. This course will look at two books discussing social healing: Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters at the End (responding to the ravages of aging) and Teya Sepinuck’s cases in Theater of Witness (responding to myriad afflictions occasioned by our modern world.) A final point to consider: while this approach does not seek to replace biomedicine, the course will discuss how social healing really does heal.

First, some background and contextual stuff, then a bit on the contents of the course

Healing comes in many textures and flavors, and has close in relatives – of which, arguably,  prevention is the most important.
e. g., In all manner of ways, the lifeways of human groups conduce for and against good health.  Perhaps the most striking, but until recently little noticed, example of conduce-for has been the lifeways of foragers, hunters and gatherers…… the lifeways of all human groups for the first 95% of the history of our species.  Foragers for most of their history have been healthier and longer lived than sedentary cultivators, and the so-called diseases of civilization – e.g., diabetes, cardio-vascular diseases, lung diseases, cancer – are all but absent among many forager peoples.  The secret?  It’s simple…… what you do and do not eat, what your exercise consists of, the quality of the air you breathe.  Recent Western awareness of this has spawned a new field of medicine – evolutionary medicine, which is largely before the fact preventive medicine, not so much after the fact curative medicine.  A foundational work in this field is THE PALEOLITHIC PRESCRIPTION(Dorothy Shostak, Melvin Konner, Boyd Eaton).

In our modern world, of course, prevention presents with immunizations, also in reliable procedures to insure medically safe drinking water and sanitary disposal of bodily and other human wastes.

In the human career, as far as the occurrence of good health is concerned, prevention arguably has made a larger contribution than has healing.

In our course, though, we narrow our focus to just healing in the modern, mainly Western world.  Of course, here as everywhere and when in the human career self healing looms large.  Our bodies and minds heal themselves of many afflictions.  Our course, though, looks just at healing provided by others for the afflicted.  For us, in the wings is biomedicine, which responds mainly to medical diseases and physical injuries.  Stage center is a much more amorphous domain, social healing, which in multiplex ways responds to the ravages our socialities oft times inflict upon us.

The course will not offer a definition of social healing.  It will proceed, rather, in the for-example mode, looking in depth at two quite different examples of social healing, each of which has enjoyed striking success…. and will ask, a)  of what does success consist? and, b)  how does each social healing practice bring it about?  Case material will be the name of our game

Now, a quick peek at some of the case material…….

Theater of Witness is a socio dramatic practice created by the enchantress, Teya Sepinuck(vide THEATER OF WITNESS.  FINDING THE MEDICINE IN STORIES OF SUFERING, TRANSFORMATION, AND PEACE).   Google ’Teya Sepinuck’ and ’Theater of Witness’ and links accessing what TOW does will come up.  Consider just one example:  Ulster, the decades of the troubles, Two mothers, one Protestant and one Catholic.  Each mother has lost a son to the troubles, the Protestant son murdered by the IRA, the Catholic son the murderer, in prison for life.  The losses are deeply grievous for both mothers; and the grief is sorely exacerbated by the burning hatred the mothers hold for each other(although they have never met).  Teya comes to know each mother, effortlessly elicits their trust and affection, and brings the two together in a relaxed and supportive setting, and encourages each mother to relate her story….of her son, of course, and whatever else in her life…..  The face to face relating of what matters most deeply and grievously to each mother elicits empathy in both mothers, which enables them to  experience a shared humanity, which serves to move the bitter hating from their front burners to their back burners, and then off the stove entirely.  Grief, for the loss of their sons will never go away.  But sans the hating, more good living becomes more possible for both mothers.  The hot button issues which fueled the troubles were not at all involved in this, neither mother changed her views on these issues

Atul Gawande is a distinguished surgeon, who has adopted as well a distinctly non surgical healing agenda, viz., to explore how public health can be significantly improved without any advances in medical science.  In his published work, re this agenda he roams far and wide.  Of course, he is on top of the medical aspects of the afflictions he attends to.  But, as we reckon  different professional specializations, in this part of his career he does not do what the medical profession normally does.  He is much more into a field often called the sociology of work, or the sociology of occupations and professions, specifically, one of its sub fields, the sociology of medicine.  And, inter alia, in his ON BEING MORTAL.  MEDICINE AND WHAT MATTERS IN THE END, he looks closely and deeply at the sociality of aging, of becoming and being old, and at the ravaging of lives that sometimes comes with this.  Of course, important among these ravages are the physical and mental declines that will come to just about all of us who are not taken away by something sudden.  But also important here is social impoverishment.  Might possibly this be alleviated?  Well, says Gawande, if it actually happens, then it’s possible.  And he goes shopping…. for instances of its actual occurrence….. and finds some striking instances which, inexpensively, could be replicated on a large scale.  It’s an exercise in social engineering, figuring out ways to enrich the lives of elders with positively meaningful sociality…. some of which can be with animals.

Now, Atul Gawande has not so far as I know looked into Maine’s senior colleges.  But had he done so I think he would have seen an example of the occurrences he seeks….. not so much in the contents of the courses and other activities which the senior colleges make available to seniors.  But rather in the sociality that enwraps and suffuses the activities of the senior colleges

Suggested Reading: Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters at the End, ISBN 978-0805095159; Teya Sepinuck, Theater of Witness: Finding the Medicine in Stories of Suffering, Transformation, and Peace, ISBN 978-1849053822.

Steve Piker is an anthropologist who has done field work in Thailand and the U.S. He has also taught for 44 years at Swarthmore and instructed more than 30 courses at Maine’s senior colleges. Healing is a life-long career interest.