In the last post I discussed how reductionism became established as the principal method of figuring out problems. Such was the success of reductionism in solving mechanical/technical problems it gradually began to include social problems (e.g. education, medicine etc.) as well.
Minimising the level of chaos, or uncertainty, out of healing promised (and over the centuries, delivered) huge improvements in the quality of healing offered by the medical profession.
Rather than being a mixture of guesswork, ancient lore, intuition and superstition, the exact reason why a person was unwell could be determined, (diagnosis) and the exact treatment that would make that person better again could be determined scientifically.
With parallel developments in pharmaceuticals initiated by advances in the knowledge of chemistry, exact doses of chemicals could be given (prescriptions) to alter the chemistry of the body so that healing could be virtually guaranteed.
Anaesthetics (more chemicals) could be given so that a patient would feel no pain as a surgeon removed damaged parts of the body to provide relief, like a mechanic would remove a damaged part of an engine.
So it is no surprise that over the centuries the body came to be viewed as a machine of sorts, which could be fixed just like an engine could be fixed.
This, of course, also involved handing over most of the responsibility for the healing process to an expert person (a doctor or surgeon – or a dentist) who knew exactly what to do. (I gave an example of this from my own life in a previous post).
(Just as an aside, I am not an expert on the study of the origins of words but I find it fascinating that the word that describes the person who has handed over power to heal to, and is waiting for a cure from, an expert, knowledgeable other is the word patient which is also the adjective that describes a person who can wait for a long time for something or someone without getting annoyed).
Cures for the condition that became known in the last three hundred years as mental illness, however, eluded the fast developing medical profession which was making such huge leaps in curing physical illness. The results that were achieved by dispensing chemical medication to those who were diagnosed as mentally ill were very patchy, and brought little long term relief, though it was tried in many different guises continuously over that time and still is.
Naturally enough the mechanical model of healing (in particular the handing over of responsibility for one’s healing) continued to be very influential in efforts that were developed more recently to alleviate mental illness, including – to some extent – theories proposed by Freud in the early years of the 20th century (and many other practitioners over the decades following) to the present day.
And it is accepted by clinicians that, unlike physical ailments, relief from emotional distress/mental illness will not be long-term. Indeed, as I mentioned already, mental illness might go on forever.
The elimination of uncertainty and chaos became just as important in psychiatry and psychology, (the sciences that focused on healing mental illness) as it was in physical healing.
This is not surprising, nor am I being over-critical of it here!
One can achieve very little in a chaotic environment, and anyway humans tend towards order and structure. And viewed from the perspective of the person in distress, continual chaos and crisis mean that there is always a good reason to hand over responsibility for healing to an external expert.
Generally, if I have a crisis going on I don’t have to take responsibility for not being responsible – and handing over the problem to someone else relieves me of that.