The Mind Body Prescription : Healing the Body, Healing the Pain by John E. Sarno
Reviews of The
Mind Body Prescription : Healing the Body, Healing the Pain by John E.
Sarno
Amazon.com
Dr. John Sarno caused quite a ruckus back in 1990 when he suggested
that back pain is all in the head. In his bestselling book, Healing Back
Pain: The Mind-Body Connection, he claimed that backaches, slipped
discs, headaches, and other chronic pains are due to suppressed anger,
and that once the cause of the anger is addressed, the pain will vanish.
Relieved Amazon.com readers call this book "liberating" and say "it
sounds too good to be true, but it is true." Sarno has returned with The
Mindbody Prescription, in which he explains how emotions including
guilt, anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem can stimulate the brain
to
manufacture physical symptoms including fibromyalgia, repetitive strain
injuries, migraine headaches, hay fever, colitis, ulcers, and even acne.
If
these psychosomatic problems all sound a little Freudian, what with the
repression of emotions in the unconscious, it's because Sarno
unapologetically borrows from Freud for the basis of his theory and cites
childhood trauma as a major source of emotional problems. He also says
that his program is a "talking cure" of sorts, since patients must be
convinced their pain is rooted in their emotions before healing can begin.
The book reads a bit like psychology text, with Sarno quoting from
psychoanalytic theorists including Heinz Kohut and Graeme Taylor and
the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,
Fourth Edition). Sarno walks through the neurophysiology of mindbody
disorders, lists the symptoms of dozens of disorders that he believes are
emotion-based, and offers a basic program for overcoming
psychosomatic pain and illness. His recovery plan includes meditation and
sometimes psychotherapy, including behavior modification, and stopping
any medication or physical therapy. While Sarno's ideas seem radical,
they were commonly implemented earlier in the 20th century, when
psychoanalysis was at its peak of popularity, and they promise to
become more accepted in our current era of alternative medical therapies
and anger management. --Erica Jorgensen
The Mind Body Prescription : Healing the Body, Healing the Pain by John E. Sarno
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