Presenter: Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, PhD
Objectives: Participants completing this presentation will be able to:
- Integrate the conventional European understanding of an illness with an aboriginal approach to illness.
- Plan an approach to allowing an illness to tell its story.
- Practice an approach to dialogue with an illness appropriate to their own culture.
Description: In the theoretical portion of
this presentation, we will consider European views of
illness and disease as invaders derived from a microbial
model originated by Louis Pasteur. This model leads to an
approach to healing that involves destroying the invader,
whether by chemotherapy, antibiotics, or guided imagery
that imagines white blood cells zapping foreign invaders as
in Star Wars or Pac-Man.
Aboriginal approaches give illnesses higher ontological
status with spirits, consciousness, meanings and purposes,
and even values. Illnesses are viewed as having their own
agendas, which can be helpful or harmful to the person.
Within this frame of reference, other techniques arise,
including interviewing the illness within an imaginal
setting to allow it to present itself as it wishes to
appear and to tell its own story.
Within this story lies its reasons for having come to the
particular person who hosts it and the conditions under
which it would choose to leave. From within the story of
the illness from its point of view, new and innovative
approaches to healing (including guided imagery) evolve.
The presentation will include demonstrations of how the
presenter works and summarizes this information as well as
instruction for participants to be able to consider and
adopt this work to their own contexts.