FEST Writing Group

>This is a work in progress.  I have struggled for several months with these two books.  I think they are important, but they both are using a research model I am not used to evaluating.< 

In the last few years, Michael Kerr has cited two books on spontaneous healing.

1. Radical Remission, by Kelly Turner PhD
2. Cured: The Life-Changing Science of Spontaneous Healing, by Jeffrey Rediger MD

There is much to admire in these books, but as usual they lack even a breath of systems thinking.  Let’s attempt to preserve the good observations in these books and then tweak the content with Bowen Family Systems Theory.

The basic idea of both books was to find people who had received documented terminal cancer diagnoses but then went on to recover from these cancers completely (again documented).  These two researchers interviewed them and reviewed their medical histories with an eye to what distinguished them from those who didn’t recover from their terminal cancer.

To me, it is a major contribution that these two researchers have verified that such people exist, people who have made complete recoveries from terminal cancer diagnoses. 

That done, you have found people who qualify as having recovered completely from terminal cancer diagnoses(all documented).  What do you want to learn from these people?  You’d like to know whether there are differences in genetics, thought, behavior, epigenetics, and beliefs from those who didn’t recover.  Do the differences have any possible  causal significance in their recovery?  In these two projects, there was no attempt to discover whether there were differences in genetics or epigenetics.  So we are left with the differences in behavior, beliefs, and thinking.  These two projects also did not explore for any substantive differences in the social systems in which these people lived.  Therefore, let us work with what observations the two projects have given us, and remember what might be also studied in future research with recovery groups like these.

These projects began with an important question asked of each subject: “What do you believe contributed to your recovery?”

Turner and Reedier then both claim to have found characteristics of these people that begin to explain how these unexplained recoveries might have been accomplished.  However, neither provides any information about whether these characteristics are present in people with terminal cancer diagnoses who didn’t survive.  Nor estimates of how often such complete recoveries occur(the prevalence).

 

Factors found in those who recovered completely

Turner cited 10 factors often present in those who recovered:  

strengthened social support              relaxation-meditation

spirituality                                             meaningful life goals 

exercise                                                   nutrition

healing hidden negative feelings       augment positive affect

don’t identify with the illness             take control of your own healthcare

 

Rediger cited at least 8 factors: 

healing the immune system               healing nutrition

healing one’s stress response             healing identity-self

activating a placebo effect                   healing your heart

burn your boats                                     facing your death

 

Both Turner and Rediger reported that most of the people who had made complete recoveries had made drastic changes to their lives after they received their terminal diagnoses.  They weren’t passively sitting back and doing nothing.  The changes had included many of the beliefs and behaviors they had reported.  Many of these changes involved taking more active control of their lives.  For example, taking control of health and healthcare, selecting meaningful long term goals, taking action to heal their chronic stress response, reviewing and changing their identity-self, change nutrition, change exercise, taking intuitions seriously, facing the reality of one’s death.

Many began doing several of these behaviors and beliefs.  Note that this is becoming active and deciding for self to make what they regard as healthy changes.

 

What might Bowen Family Systems Theory contribute to the study of these “miraculous cures”?

Assess the level of differentiation of the social systems context.

The level of differentiation of one’s social context.  Michael Kerr said to me, “Whenever there is a field, think context, context, context.”  Simple but true, especially since context is ignored when thinking from an individual theory perspective.

The level of differentiation of one’s social context has been a long neglected topic.  These spontaneous healing recoveries did not occur in a social vacuum.

I’ll make a start by using a few nuggets from Bowen Family Systems Theory to approach the topic of level of differentiation of the social context of an individual.

Better differentiated social context will be more likely to have active connections throughout the network of relationships.  

Clearer communications about tasks and about who is responsible for what.  

More meaningful long term goals and doing actual execution of what is needed to reach those goals.

More open communication.  That is, more marriages and friendships like those Bowen described in his 1966 paper.

More appreciation of how much luck plays in what the system possesses.  Then a reality oriented sense of what is needed to deal with what luck has given you or not given you.

Less blaming and scapegoating(family projection process).

More behavior that does not interfere with others differentiating themselves.

 

The role of individual level of differentiation in all the reported factors.

Apply the concept of differentiation to what recovering patients had reported in their interviews during the two projects. One qualifier to these interviews is that these factors are all self-report.  So, there is probably some accuracy, but we should not assume that they all are 100% accurate self-reports.

Social support is known to be generally helpful but not when the emotional connections are at a lower level of differentiation or intense fusions.

Changes in exercise, relaxation-meditation, and nutrition: again, such changes will generally be helpful but more unpredictable and ineffective when level of differentiation is lower.  For example, some lower differentiation individuals will freak out when they try to do relaxation exercises.

Similarly, some lower differentiation people will fall apart if they precipitously try to recover negative memories of childhood abuse.  Not constructive at all.

Benefits of spirituality will also vary in important ways with level of differentiation.

Meaningful life goals: persons with lower level of differentiation will have a difficult time formulating long term goals and an even harder time applying them to everyday behavior.

Similarly, lower differentiation individuals will have a difficult time thinking about changes in self and then applying them. 

Burn your boats and facing your death: both require making changes and sticking to them, as if your life depended on it(as of course it does).  Lower differentiation individuals will have more difficulty doing that.        

I have long suspected that better differentiated people are more successful at making positive placebo effects become permanent.