I'm a healing artist, one who practices the healing arts. I'm also a scientist and physician trained in the scientific method. During the first 20 years of my career, science was uppermost. Though I always loved my patients, my training had led me to "see" them as carriers of illness who had to be cleaned up. On the other hand, I, as a physician, was free of such problems.
I never articulated it, and that was my problem. My training had not encouraged me to think in a holistic way about my patients. I only dealt with their individual organs.
The last 10 years, however, I've been delving into art, trying (I see now) to identify the physician's art. This has come from a fervent wish to restore myself as a caregiver by "restorying" myself and a realization that I'm as ill, or as well, as my patients. We're all in it together, living and dying. The "restoring through restorying" image is not mine, but that of Gail Ellison, the chief architect of last June's Arts in Medicine Symposium.
Comment by Bob Allston: Dr. Graham-Pole reveals a fundamental characteristic of his view of holistic healing. He apparently opts to switch to art rather than explore further applications of the scientific method regarding the holistic end of the healing spectrum. This appears to be a common misconception among many; that somehow the scientific method doesn't apply equally well to both ends of the healing spectrum.
It's no coincidence I felt the need to create Arts in Medicine at our health science center five years ago at just the time I found myself disenchanted with what biomedical science could accomplish alone. The specific trigger for me was my ennui with "scientific" writing. I'd embarked on creative writing in the form of poetry, focusing on my work as a pediatric oncologist, acknowledging in myself more interest in the creative form of the words than the scientific data they were describing.
Comment by Bob Allston: When he says he was disenchanted with what medical science could accomplish alone, that certainly makes sense, and it is certainly a legitimate view of AIM's function-- as a valuable compliment to established medical treatment. However, I'm perplexed with the last statement. Anyone can get tired of scientific writing and anyone can like to write poetry. They are essentially different forms of language for different purposes. But this is flavored with conflict between the two, as if they were somehow in the same arena. Is he suggesting that poetry is superior to scientific writing"? To me its apples and oranges. I would think this perception is an unusual one for a scientifically trained medical doctor to have.
The seeds a few of us scattered here five years ago have blossomed into an unruly organic plant, spreading at will. This is intentional: we have urged our newcomers to seek to restore by restorying themselves, "doing their own thing." Self-starters flourish in this ecology, but only if they also give and seek support to and from other self-starters as they go along. We aren't looking for folks who uphold that old pioneer quality of independence at all cost. We want to foster togetherness over isolation, cooperation over competition.
This has meant that AIM has stayed short on rules, structure and organization and has stayed long on ideas, invention and personal exploration, while doing it as a community and having fun.
We hearken to Peter Russell's advice: "If it ain't fun, don't do it. But if you gotta do it, make it fun."
Comment by Bob Allston: This is another rather perplexing statement-- if what you are doing for AIM isn't fun then make it fun. Is the goal of everything to have "fun"? Although fun is a component and arguably a necessary component of what AIM people do, it certainly isn't the end-all or even the principle focus. Obviously there are more valuable deeper satisfactions in helping sick people; which I'm certain he would concede. Again, perhaps this is just his PR and I am nit picking but having to convert everything you do in a health care environment to fun, is just a curious way for a scientifically trained medical doctor to look at things.
It amazes me that we haven't run into more trouble. We're building this new temple/sanctuary/treasure trove on the skeleton of a traditional, conservative, fearful-of-change, cost-containing, academic medical center. Yet it hasn't just tolerated us, it's actively helped nourish us, not least by prying loose some of its precious shrinking hoard of doubloons.
Comment by Bob Allston: The contrast between "temple/sanctuary/treasure trove" and "traditional, conservative, fearful-of-change, cost containing, academic medical center", characterized as a skeleton, suggests he views the AIM concept as a vast improvement over a rather regressive if not degenerate medical status quo.
I think people here, like everywhere, know the truth when they see it laid out before them. And, of course, that's what art does: uncovers the truth, while science discovers it.
Comment by Bob Allston: Few doctors would suggest to the public or patients that they will know the truth about medical diagnosis and possibly treatment when they see it, or that art is on a par with science in doing so, which the statement seems to suggest. Again, a rather unusual statement for a person in medical science.
Even though we haven't followed the old ways, as some would still wish, in designing "placebo-controlled, double-blind, randomized clinical trials," somehow pitting art against science, the value of what we're doing seems accepted by most.
Comment by Bob Allston: Such "placebo-controled, double blind, randomized clinical trials", and related statistically based trials are simply necessary to get reliable estimates of the comparative value of a particular modality of healing. They apply equally to both AIM healing and conventional medical healing. The statistical fundamentals upon which such trials are based go back something over a hundred years. They are accepted and applied in the same manner worldwide. According to the philosophy of science they are the shortest route to knowledge. They provide a very necessary standard upon which all such studies as well as their results can be compared. They can also be a tedious expensive drudgery to carry out, in some cases going on for scores of years. There is no present substitute for them nor as far as I know is there the remotest such offing in the future. Thus to suggest that they are the "old way" is just an exceedingly curious way to characterize them. They are simply the only way.
Comment by Bob Allston: Thus, if one assumes that Arts in Healing has only marginal value of any kind, then its reasonable to suggest its modalities of healing aren't worth investigating through the use of such trials or other application of the scientific method. However if we assume it is in fact more than that, as I believe it is, then we are stuck with "placebo-controled, double blind, randomized clinical trials" or some possibly less tedious application of the scientific method. See the nature of science. .
Comment by Bob Allston: And I would strongly dispute his assertion that doing scientific research on the value of AIM modalities of healing is "pitting art against science". For, it is no more so than a judged art contest pits art against art or a judged science competition pits science against science, or a baseball game unnecessarily pits team against team. By this logic we wouldn't have any sports, competitive research, or art/craft contests, etc.
Comment by Bob Allston: Moreover, making unsubstantiated claims as to the effectiveness of AIM modalities, with which AIM unfortunately now abounds, would, I would think very definitely pit the arts community against the scientific community.
Sometime in the past year, in answer to a question put to me, I recognized that AIM has a beating heart, an energy, a life, transcending its corporate parts. If I and the other core group members were to disappear today, its heart would beat on, its tissues nourished by the constant inspiration of new breath, the flow of new blood.
What do I think is especially important now to this healing arts movement? Education and research. We need to plan together how we teach this stuff, reach that huge and hungry audience of students, health-care givers, teachers and artists and our whole community that hasn't yet made the link between the creative and healing arts. Then we need to evaluate what we're doing.
Comment by Bob Allston: Further above he suggests he doesn't want to use the scientific method (placebo controled double blind randomized clinical trials), the only method available, to evaluate what he is doing. Then here he says he is going to evaluate it-- which leaves the issue of how-- outside of some procedures that probably wouldn't be recognized by the medical community. Again all this is exceedingly curious for a scientifically trained medical doctor.
We will find, when we take a good look, that bringing all this art along to balance out the science of modern health care has created a new paradigm of harmony, equality, integrity, joy and love. Yes, it's fun. And we can all do it; we're all artists.
Further comments by Bob Allston:
During discussions and lectures on holistic healing, Dr. Graham-Pole has made the following comments elaborating further on his view of healing:
In citing a study of prayer that he reported appeared to demonstrate its effectiveness, he called it a paradigm shift.
During a discussion of studies that had been done on the effectiveness of prayer, he stated that whether or not prayer was scientifically demonstrated to be effective, he would employ it for his patients anyway.
In another holistic healing group, he commented that mainstream medicine was far away from where it should be.
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Clearly, Dr. Graham-Pole is in three cultures--art, religion and science. And it is of course his attempts to reconcile his understanding of the place of all of them in health care, where problems arise.
Sadly, his heartfelt predictions of harmony, equality, integrity, joy and love, are only doomed to failure. For his ill defined perspective toward the art and poetry he loves so much on the one hand, and the scientific method he obviously has little use for, on the other, is sewing the seeds for endless heartaches and stumbling into the future regarding medical care.
Moreover, he seems to frame it as art taking over the job of science at the holistic end of the spectrum which is ideologically unsound, for science is equally applicable at both the microbe and holistic ends of the medical spectrum. Indeed, if AIM is to survive, it is at AIM's end of the spectrum, the holistic end, where there is a critical need for more and better scientific resources; not less resources as he proposes.
It seems to me that a good way to look at it is that all three-- art, science and religion apply to both ends of the spectrum in a mutually supportive way which he needs to key into; requiring respect and understanding of the roles of each.
And, the bottom line for the future of AIM is that he's got to be willing to employ science and to know how, when and where to employ it in a complimentary fashion with art and religion if AIM is to progress or have credibility with mainstream medicine or the mainstream public, outside of various fringe cultures with an anti-science flavor he appears to be courting.