Healing Beyond the Body : Medicine and the Infinite Reach of the Mind

Does the mind produce consciousness—or transmit it? Can machines detect love? Why has job stress become a worldwide epidemic? Why do objects sometimes seem to have minds of their own? Could war be a biological condition? Dr. Larry Dossey, one of the most influential spokespersons for the role of consciousness and spirituality in medicine, tackles all these questions and more with clarity and wit. In this book, he explores the relationship—often documented in extensive research—between science and "unscientific" topics such as prayer, love, laughter, war, creativity, dreams, and immortality. Publishers Weekly Internal medicine physician Larry Dossey has been a proponent of alternative medicine since the 1970s, and in Healing Beyond the Body: Medicine and the Infinite Reach of the Mind, he collects writings on health and unique ways of healing. Among the subjects these essays cover are prayer, love, laughter, creativity, dreams and hypnosis all meant to be alternatives to standard medicine. These pieces originally appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine; now they will reach a much wider audience. (Oct.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information. Discusses Alternatives To Standard Medicine And Unique Ways Of Healing Covering Such Topics As Prayer, Love, Laughter, Dreams, And Hypnosis. 1. What Does Illness Mean? -- 2. Whatever Happened To Healers? -- 3. Suffering On The Job -- 4. The Eating-papers -- 5. War : A Vietnam Memoir -- 6. Reenchanting The World -- 7. Tickled Pink -- 8. Embracing The Trickster -- 9. Trout Mind -- 10. A Different Kind Of Dna -- 11. The Return Of Prayer -- 12. What's Love Got To Do With It? -- 13. Creativity And Cosmic Soup -- 14. Immortality. Larry Dossey. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [321]-352) And Index. In the no-nonsense world of internal medicine I inhabited, the concept of meaning seemed a philosophical nicety that could safely be ignored.