(PDF) Varieties of anomalous experience: Examining the scientific evidence.

11

ANOMALOUS HEALING EXPERIENCES

STANLEY KRIPPNER AND JEANNE ACHTERBERG

After receiving his

MD

degree from Stanford University, Lewis Mehl-

Madrona studied with various Native American medicine men and women

and shamans. One of these shamans, Paul, invited Mehl-Madrona to ac-

company him to a ceremony to be held on a Sioux reservation in North

Dakota. Mehl-Madrona helped Paul build a

tipi,

or ceremonial structure,

that would hold about

20

people who knew a young woman whose health

was dwindling away. Before entering the

tipi,

the group participated in an

afternoon sweat lodge experience, except for the patient, who was too frail

for the intense heat and whose brother “stood in” for her. That night, Paul

brought the young woman, as well as a singer, a drummer, a fire maker,

and several community members and friends into the

tipi.

As the singing

commenced, Mehl-Madrona recalls,

“A

host of other voices seemed to be

joining

. . .

the solitary singer

.

,

until there was an enormous crash. The

tipi

was shaking as Paul’s main spirit helper arrived.

A

strange grinding

noise came from somewhere underground. Blue lights flashed

on

and off

everywhere..

.

I

felt something furry walking over my hand.

A

long tail

brushed against me..

.

An icy tentacle of uneasiness wrapped around

me.

.

. .

I

found myself walking unsteadily down a long, grand corridor.

People stood grouped on either side, laughing and chattering..

.

In the

small room under the stairs,

I

saw someone being raped.

It

was the girl

353

who was sick.” Suddenly, Paul shouted,

“I

know what is wrong.” Pointing

his finger at the girl’s uncle, Paul said, “The spirits have told me. Confess

or you will die.” The uncle trembled and acknowledged the rape of his

niece, then collapsed on the ground. Paul put his mouth to the young

woman’s abdomen; making a loud, sucking sound, he pulled something out

and threw it in the fire. “She is well,” he proclaimed. Over the next few

days, the young woman improved remarkably; Paul stayed to counsel the

family, to prevent this taboo from being broken again and to mend the

broken pieces of the lives affected (Mehl-Madrona,

1997,

pp. 32-33). This

and similar experiences prompted Mehl-Madrona to return to his Native

American background to obtain insights that he integrated into his medical

practice. This is an example of healing experiences that Western biomed-

icine would consider “anomalous” and that have been widely reported over

millennia.

Frank and Frank (1991) described how most ailments were once at-

tributed

to

possession

by

an evil spirit, loss of one’s soul, or a sorcerer’s

curse. Suitable treatment was administered

by

shamans or other magico-

religious practitioners (p.

3).

These belief systems are still maintained

by

some groups of people, and indigenous medical practitioners still service

about three fourths of the world’s population (Mahler, 1977). Yet, in the

West and other parts of the world under Western influence, allopathic

biomedicine has become the dominant curative paradigm, bolstered

by

po-

litical, economic, and legal institutions. As a result, reported healing be-

haviors and experiences that deviate from this paradigm are regarded as

anomalous,

that is, at variance with biomedical diagnosis, prognosis, and

treatment. Indeed, the word

healing

is rarely mentioned within the context

of the biomedical model.

Western perspectives of health emanated principally from the Age of

Enlightenment and the philosophy of elementalism, which divided the

human being into

body

(soma),

mind

(psyche),

and spirit

(pneuma).

Ele-

mentalism’s assumption that sickness within one component could be

treated without regard to the other components laid the groundwork for

allopathic biomedicine, and the elevation

of

rationality, reductionism, and

materialism in 18th-century Western Europe made spiritual concerns irra-

tional and irrelevant (Westgate, 1996). What is anomalous from the West-

ern biomedical perspective might not be anomalous from an indigenous

perspective (e.g., shamanism), from a religious perspective (e.g., Christian

Science), or from the standpoint of other medical systems (e.g., Ayurvedic

medicine or Chinese medicine) that include spiritual dimensions

(O’Connor et al., 1997). However, Kleinman (1995) reminded us that

biomedicine has attained such a degree of primacy throughout the world

that the adjective

Western

is unsatisfactory (p. 25).

Anomalous healing experiences are often reported

by

people who

have undergone nothing but conventional medical treatment. Another

354

KRZPPNER

AND

ACHTERBERG

body

of

reports has been elicited from Westerners who have engaged in

procedures labeled as

complementary

(i.e., treatments used to complement

biomedicine) and

alternative

(i.e., treatments used as an alternative to bio-

medicine). Such descriptors indicate that these treatments do not adhere

to the mainstream political, economic, and legal structure of a particular

society in a given historical period. Gerber

(1988)

used the term

vibrational

medicine

and Srinivasan

(1988)

used the term

energy medicine

to refer to

such alternative and complementary practices as acupuncture, electrother-

apy, and homeopathy. (Barrett and Jarvis,

1993,

referred to the same prac-

tices as “quackery.”) In a

1993

study, these and other “unconventional”

therapies were being used

by

two out of three

US.

patients (Eisenberg et

al., 1993). Because the premises underlying these treatments (e.g., “like

cures like” and

“qi

energy balance”) depart from biomedicine, any ailments

successfully treated

by

these practices

(in

the absence

of

other treatments)

could be regarded as anomalous. (These practitioners also report anomalous

healings that are not circumscribed

by

the paradigms of Chinese medicine,

chiropractic, and

so

on, suggesting that one practitioner’s conventional

cure may be another practitioner’s anomaly.)

Some writers have attempted to recast aspects of complementary and

alternative practices in conventional biomedical or psychophysiological

terms (e.g., Chaves

&

Barber,

1975),

whereas others have accused practi-

tioners of vibrational and energy medicines (as well as the even more

exotic indigenous treatments) of “attempting to undermine the very con-

cept of rational science” (Stalker

&

Glymour,

1985,

p.

124).

In any case,

the study of experiential reports of healing, whether given

by

respondents

treated

by

conventional physicians,

by

complementary or alternative prac-

titioners, or

by

indigenous or “folk” practitioners, is well within the pur-

view of psychology.

In

1995,

a panel convened

by

the

Office

of Alternative Medicine,

U.S.

National Institutes of Health, identified

13

parameters needed to eval-

uate the theoretical infrastructure of systems of complementary and alter-

native medicine

(CAM)

and to design appropriate research protocols

(O’Connor et al.,

1997).

The parameters include the following: the lexicon

and taxonomy of the system, epistemology, theories, goals for interventions,

outcome measures, the context of the social organization surrounding the

system, specific activities and

materia medica,

the scope of the system, an

analysis of the benefits and costs, views of suffering and death, comparison

and interaction with the dominant medical system in the culture, and

responsibilities of the patient, practitioner, and others. The panel also pro-

vided a useful definition:

Complementary

and

alternative medicine

(CAM)

is

a broad domain

of

healing resources that encompasses all health systems, modalities, and

practices and their accompanying theories and beliefs, other than those

intrinsic to the politically dominant health system

of

a particular

ANOMALOUS

HEALlNG EXPERlENCES

355

society

or

culture in

a

given historical period. CAM includes all such

practices

and ideas self-defined by their users

as

preventing

or

treating

illness

or

promoting health and well-being. Boundaries within CAM and

between the CAM domain and the domain

of

the dominant system

are

not always sharp and fixed.

.

In

the United States in the 20th century,

the dominant healthcare

system

is,

for

want

of

a

better term, biomedi-

cine. (O’Connor et

al.,

1997,

pp.

50-51;

emphasis added)

Many of the world’s societies

do

not

accept that the causal categories of

Western biomedicine (e.g., accidents, infections, and organic deterioration)

provide important explanations for illness; indeed, Murdock’s

(

1980) survey

found alternatives to Western biomedicine’s explanations

of

disease in a

majority of the

139

societies he reviewed.

The goals of biomedicine might differ from the goals of an alternative

or

complementary treatment. For example, biomedical investigators rarely

ask such questions as,

Is

there a recovery-prone personality? Cardeiia

(1996) added that there is no current diagnosis in psychology or psychiatry

for the underdevelopment of a person’s capacities for achieving an enjoy-

able quality of life (p. 94); nor is disregard for the environment looked

upon as a disorder

by

biomedical practitioners, although it would be a sign

of

imbalance and dysfunction

by

most indigenous practitioners.

It

can be

seen that the investigation of complementary and alternative procedures

needs to focus on

the

experience as well as the event

of

healing if these

systems are to be adequately fathomed and appropriately evaluated.

DEFINITION

Because health care systems are socially constructed, they are most

usefully studied in relationship to their cultural and historical contexts

(Kleinman,

1980,

pp.

33-35).

There are numerous accounts of unexpected

recoveries from serious sickness that, if veridical, have little or no explan-

atory basis in the context of biomedicine. To merely describe (much less

explain) these events, Western researchers sometimes take nomenclature

with which they are conversant and superimpose it on situations with

which

they

are unfamiliar (Gergen,

1985,

p. 266). Examples of terminology

with an obvious bias are “witch doctor,’’ “voodoo treatment,” and “magical

thinking.” Shweder (1990) made the point that such Western terminology

represents a reductionistic cultural imperialism that assumes a “psychic

unity” among humankind, disregarding the different ways that people func-

tion (and malfunction) in different times and places. There are many ver-

sions of reality a society can live

by,

and these “divergent rationalities”

demonstrate that not every rational process is universal (Shweder, 1986,

p. 191).

Glik

(

1993)

differentiated

healing

events

(i.e., treatment outcomes)

356

KRIPPNER

AND

ACHTERBERG

from

healing experiences

(i.e., the subjective aspects of treatment, including

its attributed meanings, its ritual context, and the client’s feelings).

This

chapter summarizes the literature that focuses on what

Glick

called anom-

alous healing experiences but it also cites pertinent anomalous healing

events; the latter have been reviewed and evaluated in several penetrating

chapters and books, even though the authors have not always reached the

same conclusions (e.g., Benor,

1992,

1994; French, 1996; Schouten,

1993;

Solfvin, 1984; Stalker

&

Glymour,

1985).

The study of anomalous healing

reports is in the tradition of first eminent psychologist in the United States,

William James

(1904),

who called for a

radical empiricism

that would study

any human experience, no matter how unusual it might seem at first glance.

These reports may be either in the form of events (an outcome or result)

or experiences (James’s ongoing “stream of consciousness” during an

“event”; see

Glik,

1993).

The literature contains three descriptive terms that we consider near-

synonyms of anomalous healing events: changes in unchangeable bodily

processes (Barber,

1984),

remarkable recoveries (Hirshberg

&

Barasch,

1995), and spontaneous remissions (O’Regan

&

Hirshberg,

1993;

van Baa-

len

&

DeVries,

1987).

There is an additional group of terms that refer to

the procedures held to be responsible for the alleged anomalies:

absent healing (Edwards, 1953)

bioenergotherapy (Adamenko,

1970;

Benor,

1992,

p.

44)

directed prayer (Dossey, 1993a, pp.

105-106)

faith healing (Haynes,

1977)

healing at a distance (Remen,

1996)

intercessory prayer (LeShan, 1976)

laying-on of hands (Grad,

1967)

magnetic healing (Bendit,

1958,

pp.

54-56;

Edwards,

1953)

mental healing (Solfvin, 1984)

metaphysical healing (Bird

&

Reimer,

1982)

noncontact therapeutic touch (Krieger,

1979;

Schouten,

1993)

nonlocal healing (Levin,

1996)

occult medicine (Shealy, 1975)

paranormal healing (Worrall, 1970)

psi healing (Benor,

1992,

pp. 11-12; Stetler, 1976)

psychic healing (St. Clair, 1974; Wallace

&

Henkin,

1978)

psychic surgery (Benor,

1994,

p.

53)

shamanic healing (Harner,

1980,

p.

44)

spiritual healing (Edwards,

1953;

Weston,

1991,

p.

38).

Only a few of these terms are interchangeable, and most of them are

idiosyncratic. For example, Edwards

(

1953)

proposed that (a) magnetic

healing is an innate capacity of most people and involves a laying-on of

ANOMALOUS HEALING EXPERlENCES

357

hands, (b) spiritual healing uses the assistance of discarnate entities, and

(c)

absent healing is directed toward someone at a distance. Benor (1992,

p.

13)

used spiritual healing as a synonym for psi healing, whereas Haynes

(1977) differentiated psychic healing from faith healing on the basis

of

the

purported spiritual factors that operate in the latter phenomenon.

LeShan (1974) differentiated between Type

1

healing, during which

healers enter an altered state of awareness in which they view themselves

and the client as one entity, and Type

2

healing, during which healers

describe sensing a “healing energy” (which they define in various ways),

usually during a laying-on of hands. Type

1

healers simply “unite” with

their clients; Type

2

healers deliberately try to heal their clients using a

variety of procedures. There are several other groups of healers in LeShan’s

typology, but he offered them simply as descriptions of what the healers

claim to

do.

Type

3

healers purport to work with discarnate entities

or

“spirits”; Type

4

healers perform psychic surgery, in which the healer sup-

posedly enters a client’s body with a simple instrument or with bare hands;

and Type

5

healers contend that they produce major biological changes in

a few minutes, changes beyond the capacities of their client’s self-repair

mechanisms, often in a religious shrine or natural setting. From an expe-

riential standpoint, most

of

the healers interviewed

by

LeShan fall into

the Type

1

category, the second largest group into Type

3,

and the third

largest group into Type

2.

When the term

spontaneous remission

is used, it is with the implicit

understanding that

no

cure is spontaneous in the sense that it lacks a causal

agent but, rather, that the putative cause is unknown. Indeed, relatively

little is known about the absolute course of any disease, and the rates of

remission for untreated conditions are uncertain. One can never be certain

what might constitute active interventions, especially when a variety of

treatments are used simultaneously. Simonton, Matthews-Simonton, and

Creighton

(1978)

sardonically commented that when a malady does not

proceed in ways that can be easily explained, the result is called

spontaneous

in much the same way as the term

spontaneous generation

covered medical

ignorance during the late Middle Ages.

At

that time, there was no easy

explanation for why maggots could grow out of nonliving matter, such as

rotten food, and

so

it was said that they were spontaneously generated.

Spontaneous remission is held to result from mechanisms that are not yet

understood (Simonton et al.,

1978,

p. 21).

Other terms are equally problematic. What parameters separate the

normal from the paranormal, the physical from the paraphysical, the non-

miraculous and nonremarkable from the miraculous and the remarkable?

By

definition, a

miracle

is an event that can be perceived

by

the senses but

operates outside the ordinary laws of nature and is brought about

by

some

power outside those laws (e.g., Broderick,

1956,

p. 240).

If

such events

occur, there is a limit to the extent that they can be studied scientifically

358

KRIPPNER

AND

ACHTERBERG

because science, in Popper’s

(1959)

opinion, demands that assertions made

by

investigators of these phenomena be, in principle, falsifiable.

From our point of view, the term

anomalous

carries less ideological

baggage than its alternatives. In anomalous healing

events,

people claim to

have recovered from serious conditions even though these purported re-

coveries do not seem to be the result of any obvious process, especially a

treatment regimen prescribed

by

biomedical practitioners. Examples

of

what biomedicine would consider anomalous healing events include the

documented growth of sizable pieces of new bone following healing sessions

in Great Britain (FitzHerbert, 1971), the removal of bone spurs in Brazil

(Maki,

1998,

pp.

176-177),

and the remission from lupus nephritis follow-

ing

treatment

by

a native Filipino healer (Kirkpatrick,

1981).

In the last

example,

a

young Filipino American woman was diagnosed with lupus, a

disease notably resistant to treatment, and conventional biomedical pro-

cedures were unsuccessful. In desperation, she went to the remote Philip-

pine village of her birth, returning with a “normal” diagnosis

3

weeks later.

She reported that the village healer had removed a curse placed on her

by

a disgruntled suitor;

23

months later she gave birth to a healthy baby girl.

Anomalous healing

experiences

are individuals’ descriptive reports

of

their sensations, feelings, thoughts, and imagery before, during, or after an

anomalous healing event. The experiences described in this chapter are

delimited to those falling outside the parameters of biomedicine, although

examples could also be given from cases directly associated

with

hypnosis,

suggestion, visualization, and other procedures that have found a place in

the repertoire of many biomedical practitioners.

Dossey

(

1993b)

contrasted anomalous healing experiences and events

with “normal” healing experiences and events, noting that the mechanisms

of the latter are proposed and accepted

by

biomedicine. What constitutes

an appropriate treatment is culturally and historically driven. For example,

a cancer patient given Coley’s toxins, believed to be a quack nonallopathic

remedy a few decades ago, and who recovered would have likely been

classified as a case of spontaneous remission

by

allopathic physicians. Since

then, these toxins have been tested in clinical trials and found to be re-

sponsible for enhancing immune response and have demonstrated effec-

tiveness against certain forms

of

the disease (DeVita, Hellman,

&

Rosen-

berg, 1991).

Many alternative and complementary practitioners, as well as indig-

enous healers, differentiate

healing

from

curing,

maintaining that a healing

can even occur in the event of death (Dossey, 1995, p.

6).

Many indigenous

practitioners consider the concept of healing to refer to the restoration of

the client’s physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual capacities, as con-

trasted with curing, which refers to surmounting a disease or dysfunction

that is primarily biologically based.

If

a client dies, curing has failed, but

ANOMALOUS

HEALING EXPERIENCES

359

if

that person has been spiritually restored before death, healing has been

successful (Krippner

&

Welch,

1992,

p.

25).

Another contrast can be made between

illness

and

disease,

the latter

term referring to a pathological or dysfunctional bodily process resulting

from injury, infection, or an ecological disequilibrium (as in environmental

diseases). In contrast, illness describes how people experience their health

and well-being, that is, how they have constructed their beliefs, behaviors,

moods, and feelings. Illness can accompany an injury, infection, or imbal-

ance, or can exist without them (French,

1996,

p.

599;

Kleinman,

1995,

pp.

31-32;

Krippner

&

Welch, 1992, p.

26).

Following a healing service,

many ardent worshippers may no longer feel

ill

but may still have a disease.

In

both the popular and the academic literature, the term

healer

is

variously applied to practitioners, such as shamans and other spiritual prac-

titioners, folk and native functionaries, and mediums and channelers, who

have reputations for restoring health, balance, and well-being to an indis-

posed client. The use of the term

healer

does not necessarily imply that

clients actually respond favorably to the practitioner’s ministrations. Nor

is the term reserved for indigenous or alternative practitioners; some phy-

sicians and psychotherapists are informally referred to as healers

by

their

satisfied patients and clients. Such terms as

healer

and

healing

are extremely

subjective, and their demonstrated effectiveness depends on the criteria

used for one’s restoration to

health,

yet another elusive concept. Pelletier

(1994), for example, defined health as an orientation of confidence in one’s

ability to control life and circumstances in such a way that meaning or

purpose is created, rather than taking the customary biomedical stance that

health is merely the absence of disease.

PHENOMENOLOGY

The phenomenology of anomalous healing experiences for both the

client and the healer has been investigated. Despite the limitations inher-

ent in small, retrospective studies of people’s experiences, these findings

bear consideration. At the same time, one must always ask if similar sub-

jective reports could have been elicited from individuals who

did

not sur-

vive their disease. Some studies have taken this group into consideration,

but others have not.

Client Descriptions

Several investigators have produced data bearing on the phenome-

nology of anomalous healing experiences. Important factors to consider in

these studies include (a) the individuals’ poor track record in making causal

attributions-their preferred attributions are more likely the reflection of

3 60

KRIPPNER

AND

ACHTERBERG

their causal schemata and “personal myths” rather than consensual reality

(Krippner

&

Winkler, 1996), and (b) the typical lack of control or com-

parison groups in most of these studies.

Knight (1994) asked

3

people who recovered unexpectedly from se-

rious medical conditions to describe the “experience of hope in your ill-

ness” (p.

57),

and then used Giorgi’s (1970) method of phenomenological

analysis to identify the description’s general structure of meaning. This

structure consisted of “immediate rupture” (e.g., a break with one’s former

concepts about the illness), a reactive phase in which this rupture was

pondered and conceptualized, an engagement of alternatives (in which the

polarity between old and new concepts was engaged), and the realization

and embodiment of such new concepts as hope, transformation, and in-

tegrat ion.

Berland

(

1995)

conducted semistructured, in-depth interviews with

33

long-term survivors who had been given less than a 15% chance of

5-

year life expectancy and yet had lived long after this limit. He also ad-

ministered the Health Attribution Test (Achterberg

&

Lawlis, 1989),

which taps belief about one’s responsibility for the control over health and

illness, and the Pie Chart (Achterberg

&

Lawlis, 1989), an informal mea-

sure in which the participants divided circles into “pie slices” that repre-

sented factors to which they attributed their recovery. When asked what

they personally believed accounted for their longevity, the participants

cited psychosocial factors (attitudes, behaviors, spiritual beliefs and prac-

tices, social support) twice as often as medical treatment. Berland found

that they did not attribute their longevity to chance

or

to any spontaneous

events, but rather to causal events about which they had clear and steadfast

opinions (even though these opinions may not have been shared

by

med-

ical practitioners).

Hawley (1989) also conducted in-depth interviews with

16

cancer

survivors whose recovery was considered unlikely, finding that almost all

had paradoxical responses to their diagnoses. They did not deny that they

had cancer and that it is often a fatal disease, but they did not accept that

it was fatal for them. Nor were most of them “good patients” who lacked

initiative or were just obedient. Instead, they assumed appropriate control,

feeling .that they were active participants in their own health care team.

In

general, they regarded their diagnosis as a challenge to be overcome and

their conditions as signals that they had to take charge of serious and very

challenging life events.

Psychosocial and spiritual experiences were investigated in some

45

individuals who were deemed to have made remarkable recoveries (Hirsh-

berg

&

Barasch, 1995). Activities practiced

by

more than

50%

of the group

were prayer, meditation, exercise, guided imagery, walking, music, and stress

reduction (p.

332).

Other items cited most frequently as important in re-

covery were believing in a positive outcome, having a fighting spirit, ac-

ANOMALOUS

HEALING EXPERIENCES

361

cepting the disease, seeing the disease as a challenge, having the will to

live, taking responsibility, displaying positive emotions, retaining faith, re-

newing a sense of purpose, making changes in lifestyle and behavior, elic-

iting a sense of control, nurturing oneself, and seeking social support (p.

333).

Greenfield

(1997)

interviewed

32

clients of Mauricio Magalhaes, a

Brazilian practitioner of Spiritist religious persuasion who claimed to “in-

corporate”

the

spirit of a deceased German physician, who allegedly di-

rected Magalhaes’s hands while he performed minor and major surgery.

Only

14%

of these patients claimed to have experienced pain during the

intervention, despite the lack of anesthetics, even though all but one said

they had been subjected to the insertion of needles

or

cutting with a scal-

pel. Only one of the respondents reported complications; 88% claimed to

have been helped

by

the treatment, and 64% pronounced that

they

had

been “cured.”

Of

the clients, 95% said that they preferred Magalhaes’s

treatment

to

conventional medical treatment. When asked

if

their expe-

rience had influenced their point of view about religion,

56%

answered

that they were more positively inclined toward Spiritism after treatment.

Westerbeke and Krippner

(1980)

obtained data from

88

tourists who

visited one

or

more Filipino healers and completed standardized forms im-

mediately after their healing session and

6

and

12

months later. Degree of

confidence

in

mental healing both before and after seeing the healer and

perceived amount of energy and vitality change were significantly corre-

lated with reported long-term physical, mental, and spiritual improvements.

Willingness to change one’s behavior was significantly correlated with pos-

itive long-term mental and spiritual, but not physical, improvement. Be-

cause not all

of

the tourists completed the questionnaires, self-selection

must be considered when evaluating the results.

The same questionnaire was used

by

Krippner (1990) in a study of

25

North Americans visiting a Brazilian healer. He found that willingness

to change behavior was positively correlated with spiritual improvement,

whereas energy and vitality were positively related

to

mental improvement.

Responses to the open-ended questions in

both

studies confirmed the im-

portance for recovery of the clients’ attitudinal shifts.

The results of these studies reflect, of course, the perceived causal

association of the participants. In this regard, Gilovich

(1991)

described

various ways in which everyday reasoning can be attenuated

by

cognitive

errors and personal heuristics. Krippner and Winkler (1996) described how

the

need

to

believe affects rational judgment, critical thinking, and evi-

dence assessment.

In the Netherlands, van Baalen and collaborators compared interview

data from

6

people whose recovery from cancer had been attributed to

spontaneous remission, with that from

6

patients with advanced progressive

cancer collaborators (van Baalen, DeVries,

&

Gondrie, 1987). The inves-

362

KRlPPNER

AND

ACHTERBERG

tigators found that members of the former group were more likely to report

enhanced sensory acuity, with life events being more vivid, detailed, and

magnified.

In

addition, they were more likely to report profound fluctua-

tions in mood around the time of the remission, shifting from experiencing

depression and hopelessness to experiencing a profound sense of autonomy.

One of these individuals was transported to a hospice while in a coma. On

awakening, she was angry to discover that she was expected to die, pulled

out her urinary catheter, and cursed continuously and sang filthy songs for

3

weeks. After a few weeks, the fluid from her belly disappeared; her liver,

which had grown into her pelvis, returned to a normal size. She was still

in remission a year later (van Baalen, et al.,

1987).

Numerous case reports indicate that during the time the anomalous

healing takes place, it

is

not unusual to see religious figures

or

balls of great

white light, to have special dreams

or

visions, and to feel heat and tingling

in the location of the problem (e.g., Gowan,

1980;

McClenon,

1997).

In

this regard, LeShan

(1974)

observed that the sensation of “heat” is simply

the expected response when someone’s hands are held on someone else’s

body (pp. 112-1

13);

there is a phenomenological difference between the

perception

of

“heat” and heat as measured in degrees. Instrumentation has

not shown a difference in degrees, even when both healer and healee

strongly reported such a perception.

Poloma and Hoelter

(1998)

obtained questionnaire data from

918

individuals in the United States, most of whom identified themselves as

“charismatic, Pentecostal,

or

full

gospel” (p. 264); all had experienced the

same structured healing ritual at two international conferences held in

1995.

Prayer during these rituals was significantly related to bodily mani-

festations such as deep weeping, uncontrolled shaking, rolling and thrash-

ing on the floor, dancing

or

jumping, glossolalia, “holy laughter,” or (‘roar-

ing like a lion.” These experiences were significantly related to positive

affect. Positive affect, prayer during the ritual, and bodily manifestations

were in turn significantly related to purported spiritual healings.

The phenomenological experiences of those exposed to both “official”

and “unofficial” cures at the shrine at Lourdes, France, include mention of

a sense of unawareness, of being absorbed in thought, dazed, transported

beyond themselves, and exhibiting such physical sensations as “red hot

heat” permeating the body (Cranston, 1955/1957).

There are few research studies that have attempted to identify the

degree to which psychological processes contribute to anomalous healing

experiences,

but

one of the most ingenious is that of McClenon

(1997).

He supervised an ethnographic research study in which anthropology stu-

dents at a North Carolina college obtained reports of over 1,000 anomalous

experiences from their relatives, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances.

Of

these transcribed narratives,

85

pertained to folk-healing practices.

To

de-

termine the role that suggestion and placebo processes played in the re-

ANOMALOUS

HEALlNG EXPERIENCES

363

ported experiences, two independent judges coded the narratives

on

11

dimensions, for example, “Does the person being healed report an instan-

taneous reduction of pain attributed to the healing activity?”

“Is

belief

mentioned as a factor influencing either behavior

or

the outcome of treat-

ment?” and

“Is

there a person

. .

.

regarded as able to perform healing?”

Belief was cited as a factor in healing in 13% of the narratives, sup-

porting the hypothesis that hypnotic and placebo processes are shaped and

enhanced

by

a person’s beliefs.

In

addition, 39% of healings

by

preachers

and healers, 25% of church healings, and 26% of prayer healings included

anomalous perceptions, sensations, or bodily movements (e.g., unusual heat

or “energy”). The frequency of unusual experience motifs in the narratives

supported McClenon’s hypothesis that folk healing and hypnotically facil-

itated therapy use parallel methods, involving a special person who pro-

vides therapeutic suggestions through ritual procedures. However, the ex-

perimenters were students with a minimum degree of training, and the

questions asked admitted variable interpretations; thus, these results can

be best considered as suggestive and as a stimulus for future research.

Irwin

(

1994) summarized the anomalous healing experiences of cli-

ents from several studies

in

a number

of

Western cultures, noting that many

clients are at a low ebb when they first visit an alternative practitioner.

The practitioner attempts to encourage rapport, expectation, and relaxa-

tion. During the treatment session, such physical sensations as heat and

increased vitality are typically reported; following the session, conviction

in the treatment’s efficacy

is

usually stronger, and a commitment is made

to take a greater sense

of

responsibility for one’s life (pp. 40-41). However,

the clients’ improvement after a low ebb can be interpreted as a regression-

to-the-mean effect. Over time, one would expect a sizable percentage of

clients using conventional or nonconventional treatment to show improve-

ment as their health status returns to average status. Irwin emphasized that

research efforts would be facilitated if care were taken to ensure that the

healer’s language and concepts were understood

by

clients, who often rep-

resent a wide range of occupations, ages, and cultural backgrounds (see

Harvey,

1983).

Practitioner Descriptions

A

major contribution to standardizing the terminology

of

healing

practitioners has been made

by

Winkelman

(

1992), who studied the rec-

ords of spiritual practices in

47

societies, past and present. He found doc-

umentary evidence identifying several categories of practitioners. Their

healings practices include access to spiritual entities (e.g., deities, ghosts,

and spirits), direction of their society’s healing activities (e.g., prayer and

sacred ceremonies), and employment of special powers (e.g., casting spells,

bestowing blessings, and exorcising demons).

3

64

KRZPPNER

AND

ACHTERBERG

Winkelman

(

1992)

found that practitioners’ roles changed as societies

became more complex. For example, shamans (i.e., practitioners who claim

to access and interact with the “spirit world”

by

deliberately changing their

ordinary modes of perceiving, thinking, and feeling through drumming,

dancing, ingesting psychoactive drugs, etc.) were typically found

in

groups

with no formal social classes, such as hunting-and-gathering tribes and

fishing societies. Once a society began to practice agriculture, social and

economic stratification accelerated. Concomitant with this development,

priests and priestesses emerged who controlled a society’s religious rituals;

the political power and social status

of

shamans were reduced, and they

became “shaman/healers” (or “shamanic” healers) because healing became

their major function. The shamanic healer typically engaged in more self-

regulatory activities, such as changed states of awareness, than

did

priests

and priestesses.

Social and economic differentiation became even more complex with

the appearance of separate judicial, military, and legislative institutions. As

the competition between (and within) these groups took place, the role of

the malevolent practitioner (e.g., sorcerer or witch) appeared. Both sha-

mans and sorcerers claimed to enter changed states of awareness, as

did

another type of healing practitioner, diviners or mediums, who claimed to

“incorporate” spirits, allowing them to speak and act through their voices

and bodies. The shamans’ remaining functions included such specialized

healing capacities as the performing of healing songs and dances, dispensing

herbal medicines, diagnosis, bone-setting, midwifery, and surgery. Winkel-

man

(1992)

referred to these practitioners as healers (i.e., shamanistic heal-

ers), for whom a changed states of awareness was not longer a defining

characteristic.

Winkelman’s

(

1992) classification system was remarkably accurate

when cross-societal comparisons were made; with only two exceptions, sha-

mans never were found in tribal groups displaying an administrative polit-

ical organization beyond the local level, and no shamans were found in

sedentary agricultural societies

in

which the nomadic way of life was ab-

sent. These distinctions have important research implications; Rouget

(

1980/198S)

pointed out that shamanism and mediumship “are products

of two quite different ideologies

of

trance” (p.

25;

Varieties of anomalous experience: Examining the scientific evidence.

Abstract