Illness as Pregnancy and
the Life
Doctor as Midwife
If we understand illness in the framework
of Life Medicine, i.e. as a life process comparable to gestation,
then all forms of medical treatment or ‘cure’ are equivalent to
an attempt to medically ‘terminate’ or ‘abort’ the new bodily
sense of self or ‘body identity‘ that is pregnant in the
patient’s dis-ease. Such premature medical termination or abortion
of an illness has the immediate ‘side effect’ of preventing the
patient from taking time to explore, understand and identify more
clearly the new sense of self they are gestating and pregnant with –
and to find ways of giving birth to it through a new way of living
and relating. Abortive biomedical treatment may and does also
frequently ‘miscarry’ in several others ways – not just through
other side effects but also through actually intensifying the
‘illness process’ – the process by which a felt dis-ease is
‘somatised’ and as a result may take the form of ever more
chronic or acute medical symptoms and diseases. Finally, even if a
disease or its symptoms are
cured – whether through conventional medicine, alternative medicine
or ‘spiritual’ healing – if the underlying dis-ease behind it
is not explored, the result may well be that the patient simply gives
expression to this dis-ease through other
symptoms or another
disease – one that may be worse or more serious than the one
supposedly ‘cured’.
The ‘health process’ is a process of
giving ourselves time to feel ourselves more deeply into a felt
dis-ease with the aim of sensing it as an expression of a different
bodily sense of self – rather than simply seeking to counteract or
cure, suppress or exorcise its symptoms. Since so few people are able
to approach any felt sense of dis-ease in this way however –
through ‘the health process’ – this dis-ease may need to take
the form of ever more acute or chronic disease symptoms for them to
begin to do so. The illness process therefore, can also provide a
spur for the health process. Yet if, through the illness process, an
individual’s dis-ease
has already reached the point of transforming itself into a serious
biological disease, then some form of biomedical intervention may be
unavoidable, if only to alleviate its symptoms.
This is precisely the point at which Life
Doctoring becomes so vital and relevant – even if conducted in
parallel with medical doctoring. For only Life Doctoring can ensure a
true ‘healing process’ is set into train. Here the role of the
Life Doctor is to serve as midwife
for the patient – helping them to give birth to changes in their
sense of self or body identity and not just their body, and to
changes in their life as a whole and not just their bodily life.
Life Doctoring sessions serve to support
this healing and birthing process by offering times and ways for the
patient to step back from purely biomedical diagnoses, prognoses and
treatments of their illness and by helping them both feel into and
come to understand the deeper meaning and purpose of their illness –
thus restoring the health process in place of the illness process.
The Life Doctor can also play a vital role in helping the patient to
consider more carefully and if necessary reject potentially dangerous
or high-risk forms of diagnostic testing, treatment or surgery. For
the danger is that these may either miscarry, worsen the patient’s
symptoms or hasten the
progression of their disease – and in any one of these ways result
in their premature death. On the other hand, even if medical
treatments for serious or terminal diseases are
‘successful’ in purely
biomedical terms, they may massively reduce the patient’s quality
of life – merely to extend
that life for what is often only a very minimal period.
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