When Healing Becomes Educating, Vol. 2 - Waldorf Research Institute

soul, for they do not know that it is the whole person they should be caring
for...”
Despite all the great changes that have taken place in the history of
medicine and therapeutics, little has changed in this particular respect
Although all able physicians in all ages and cultures have found that
psychological factors play a part in sickness and health, this has not been
sufficiently taken into account in medical theory and practice, in pathology
or therapy, to the detriment of patients and medicine alike.
In the early part of this century depth psychology and its successors
began a counter-movement by stressing the psychological aspect. A wave
of speculative interpretations linking body and psyche laid particular stress
on the unconscious side of psychological experience and factors playing a
part in the pathogenesis of neurotic and so-called psychosomatic illness. A
characteristic mixture of speculation and dogmatism in the understanding
and interpretation of psychosomatic connections led to the popular spread of
the ideas emanating from depth psychology. Psychosomatic interpretations
are all too easily taken for granted and can be quite superficial. They can
easily take us unawares if we fail to bring an alert and unprejudiced attention
to bear on them. The psychoanalytic interpretation of the genesis of a gastric
ulcer, for example, states that it is an expression of an unconscious desire
to be fed, in other words of a longing to be pampered and cared for in
an unconscious regression to the oral phase of the early years of life. This
interpretation culminates in the assumption that the stomach reacts to the
unconscious wish to be fed by behaving as if it has something to digest and
thus begins to digest itself, which then leads to the ulcer.
The anthroposophic image of the human being and of medicine takes
an entirely different approach to the relationship between body and soul.
Walther Buehler’s convincing formulation of the “body being the
instrument of the soul” illuminates one aspect of the relationship between
body and psyche. The soul uses the body as a musician uses an instrument:
It plays upon it and as a result of its individual interpretation a (musical)
work of art arises. The body serves the soul and as a result nonphysical (i.e.,
psychological) processes come to physical realization.
However, the body as an instrument or a tool can also put obstacles
in the way of some of the aims or needs of the soul. Depending on how
suitable or unsuitable an instrument it is, how well cared-for or neglected,
how well-tuned or wrongly tuned, the body can spoil many a good intention
or turn many a beautiful melody into an ugly disharmony. Conversely, the
soul can despise its instrument, treat it badly, misuse it, tune it wrongly or
play it badly...
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