by Dr.Harald Wiesendanger– Klartext
What the mainstream media is hiding
Conventional medicine reaches its limits as long as it views and treats patients as bodies without souls: as biochemical machines that need to be repaired. Psychosomatics leads to a shadowy existence as a marginal field
It wouldn’t have taken much for him to be able to celebrate his 100th birthday with my foundation Auswege in 2008, in the second “Auswege” camp in a castle near Bad Honnef. The self-professed anti-ascetic would undoubtedly have felt at home in our circle, and not just because we could have offered him the “good food in many different variations” that he enjoyed throughout his life without regret (1), but because he would have found brothers and sisters in spirit in our team of therapists: Thure von Uexküll (1908-2004), who is considered the founder of psychosomatic medicine, together with Georg Groddeck, Viktor von Weizsäcker and others. Together with us, he would have lamented what the medical establishment had allowed his brainchild to degenerate into: a marginal field of expertise – and not a fundamental discipline, as he understood it to be.
Psychosomatics, as he taught it (from the Greek psyche: breath, soul; soma: body, flesh), examines the psychological background of physical illnesses in order to include them in treatment – and finds them not just in a small section of the diagnostic spectrum, but in every case. “Nothing is purely somatic,” Uexküll once said. “There are only psychosomatic illnesses.” This applies, for example, to asthma, stomach ulcers, and eczema, and even to broken bones or torn tendons because they’re, too, “the psychological is at work,” which is shown by the fact that some people are strangely prone to accidents.
Psychosomatics understands the insult behind the illness – not just the defect behind the dysfunction.
This essentially corresponds to the experiences we have had in “ways out” camps with hundreds of patients, both young and old: in their history, their environment, their relationships, their mental state, their thought and behavior patterns, we almost always discover factors that could have contributed to their illness – and which must be taken into account and treated in order to initiate recovery processes and achieve lasting healing. The psyche and the physique are one. Therefore, a good doctor must always keep both in mind and see the whole. In other words, he must think and act holistically. This obliges him to resist the “predominant concept of health” in medicine, which “describes the proper functioning of a machine – a very complicated machine that can, however, be broken down into sub-machines,” as von Ueküll complained. “Medicine lacks a definition of the experiencing body. It also does not have a definition of the soul, even if the two are formulated separately. Medicine’s view of man is technocratic. The biotechnically intangible content is lost, and most doctors don’t care about it.” With this operational blindness, they squander chances of healing: “After all, the diseases that can be understood with the narrow concept of conventional medicine only make up about five percent. The medical model only applies to these and is only helpful for these.”
How uncertainty makes you dizzy
How much can be achieved therapeutically, even in the most stubborn cases that have been “resistant to treatment” for decades, if the unfortunate division of medicine into “one for bodies without souls and one for souls without bodies” (Uexküll) is overcome, has become apparent in each of our camps. For example, in the case of Helga*, 52: The early-retired businesswoman had suffered from chronic pain all over her body since the mid-1980s. Around the year 2000, she also began to suffer from constant dizziness, which significantly impaired her walking.
Of the participants in our 14th camp in Schwarzenborn, northern Hesse, in May 2014, hardly anyone made more significant progress than Helga: the pain and constant dizziness subsided by the end of the camp, and at times, they seemed to have vanished. The focus of our efforts was on the “depressive moods” that Helga had stated on her registration form. There were clearly psychological factors at work behind the manifest symptoms: “She was an insecure, frustrated woman,” as our camp doctor noted, “presumably with difficulties at work and in her private life. The various diagnoses were good excuses for her disappointment with the world, her helplessness, and probably also her anger. Explanatory discussions about the meaning of her diagnoses and how to deal with them seem to have changed her thinking very quickly and led to new confidence, even joy in life.” During the healing week, she blossomed, seemed relaxed, and was energetic. She joked extensively with other participants; at the closing party, she entertained the whole group with humorous poems with a beaming smile, teasingly promoting our foundation. “My body feeling has improved; I am happier,” she wrote in conclusion. The word “thank you” appears 21 times in her camp diary. She felt that a group dance on the day of departure was “a dance into my new life.” Pain all over his body – from the depths of a tormented soul
For a long time, Ludwig*, a 55-year-old engineer, had been tormented by severe anxiety and depression, accompanied by chronic pain, the origin of which remained unclear despite numerous medical examinations: in his joints “for 5 to 7 years”, in his back “for one to two years”; his chest also hurt, and he constantly felt an oppressive pressure on it. He also complained of cardiac arrhythmia. What had he taken so much to heart? What had broken his heart? In contrast to the conventional doctors to whom he had confided in vain, he already suspected where his mysterious complaints could ultimately come from: “I have experienced a lot of tragedy in my current life. My physical problems could be a result of my anxiety and depression.”
In over a dozen healing sessions during a “way out” camp in July 2013, it became clear that as a young man, Ludwig had had to watch his father and mother being shot. We had barely begun to work through this trauma with him when he really came alive. Various forms of spiritual healing, from laying on of hands to chakra therapy, in combination with yoga, energetic massage, and talk therapy, triggered “intense feelings” in him, as he concluded in a patient questionnaire. “Afterwards, I felt such a deep release that I cried like a child for minutes. I was finally free of the feeling of fear that had tormented me for years. I cannot describe in words what I felt at that moment.” His mysterious pain disappeared, and his heartbeat returned to its normal rhythm.
What is taking Dorothea’s breath away?
In 2013 and 2014, Dorothea*, 54, confided in us three times, each time accompanied by her husband, because of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which is accompanied by coughing, increased sputum production, and shortness of breath when exercising. She was constantly dependent on a ventilator – or so she believed. The fear of suffocating was her constant companion.
During each camp, the symptoms decreased significantly: she “got along for a long time without oxygen” and “slept better. I had much fewer panic attacks,” she reported afterward. According to our camp doctor, the COPD symptoms also decreased significantly; Dorothea managed to get by without a ventilator at times, significantly especially when she was distracted or thought she was not being watched.
When she returned home, she initially felt “significantly better” each time. This “has subsided over time. Why am I not feeling better when I meditate and work on myself every day?” asked Dorothea. “Then comes the fear, and with the fear comes the shortness of breath.”
Our camp doctor suspects that the obstacles to therapy lie in her psyche: “Emotionally, she sees herself on an upward path,” he summed up after Dorothea’s third stay with us, “but she does not dare to follow this path. She is still plagued by too many fears that she might not feel well. In some situations, I have the impression that she needs this illness to cover up a void in her soul: if she were healthy, she would have to take care of herself again – and her husband would no longer need to spoil her. But she does not want that.” Our camp doctor considers the two tubes in her nose through which she is artificially ventilated to be “mere placebos; they would be superfluous if Dorothea learned to breathe normally” – which she did every time “as soon as she concentrated on something else.” According to several team members, her compulsive impression of being dependent on the device could stem from subjective gains from illness: she is afraid of losses that her recovery could bring – possibly even of her dutiful husband, who would not have the heart to abandon a seriously ill person – and “afraid of taking responsibility for her own life,” as our head camp doctor concluded.
Migraine after abuse trauma
For decades, Magda*, a 62-year-old teacher, had been tormented by almost unbearable migraine attacks that often lasted several days. Many painkillers did not relieve them.
If the doctors treating her had asked nearly as many questions as they did during Magda’s first of two camp stays in July 2013, it would have quickly become apparent that she was suffering from a multitude of psychological problems, which were also apparently having a physical impact. She listed the “most noticeable symptoms”: “sexual sensation disorders; contact disorders, difficulties in building sustainable relationships; tendency towards melancholy and resignation, inability to ‘take the fullness of life’; rejection of the female role; inability to act and paralysis in situations that require action; latent longing for death; partial memory disorders, memory gaps.”
What was behind it? Magda suffered her entire life from the trauma of having been sexually abused by her father in early childhood. She worked through this inner injury with us in daily healing sessions. After just a few days at camp, she felt almost euphoric. “Like I was liberated, like I was reborn. I have already had so many psychotherapies that have brought nothing; what you have done with me here is unbelievable. So intense! This camp has set me on the right path. With the help of your therapies, I have found myself! ‘Know thyself’ worked well. I look to the future with greater confidence. I was shown ‘ways out’. Thank you for that!” The camp doctor confirmed: “She has escaped from her prison. Her relief was so obvious that you could literally see and hear the ‘stones’ falling from her heart.”
Germany’s eight million migraine patients alone cause medical costs of around 4.3 billion euros per year. Of this, around 100 million are for outpatient and inpatient treatment, around 520 million for prescribed or over-the-counter analgesics, and a quarter of a billion for the consequences of drug abuse. In addition, there are an estimated 1.9 billion due to inability to work or reduced productivity. (2) Would it not be a significant contribution to curbing the explosion in healthcare costs to treat people like Magda in the same way as is done in our camps?
Notes
1 According to Werner Bartens: “The Human Doctor”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, March 15, 2008.
2 Hans-Christoph Diener: Migraine. 2nd revised and expanded edition, Stuttgart 2006 (first published in 2002), p. 7
- Pseudonyms
(Harald Wiesendanger)
This article comes from the book by Harald Wiesendanger: Ways Out – helping the sick differently (2015).