Afterwards, You're a Genius

Examines the growing popularity of alternative medicine, and discusses the mind-body connection in healing

An entertaining and insightful exploration of the relation between spirituality and healing by a journalist taking an exhilarating, often confounding trip into the world of healing hands, chakras, spirit guides, and the paranormal. In this first-person account, Brown, a former reporter for the Washington Post, shares with readers his mind-blowing experiences with and his reactions to a psychic, a practitioner of transformational aura balancing, and various hands-on healers trained in the art of manipulating the human energy field. He describes himself as caught ``in the old quarrel between the heart and the head, where the heart signifies the hunger for faith and the head expresses the compulsion to doubt,'' and his efforts to reconcile these two forces provide the book's central theme. His descriptions of the characters he meets on his journey into the world of alternative healers are choice. If theres any mockery, its directed only at himself. In the end he is still vacillating, skeptical of his own enthusiasms but longing to believe. Besides the personal story, Brown provides some background on the schism between mainstream medicine, with its emphasis on the mechanics of matter, and alternative medicine, with its focus on the immaterial. He describes how the 1909 Flexner report on medical education in the US shaped modern medicine, and he traces the link between Franz Mesmer's 18th-century animal magnetism, Wilhelm Reich's orgone energy, and today's ``therapeutic touch.'' Brown ponders the relationship of the body to the mind, the conflict between faith and reason, the role of spirituality in healing, the lack of humanity in the practice of modern medicine, and always the probability of the impossible. No answers here, but a pleasurable trip through unfamiliar territory in the company of a curious mind and lively intelligence. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Though the subject of alternative medicine often leads to polarized and strident debate, Brown brings bracing intellectual balance and humor to his exploration of the ways in which faith and spirit contribute to physical healing. Brown, a former reporter for the Washington Post and an award-winning journalist, draws on extensive historical research, lectures and interviews with practitioners, and his own experiences as a patient in this engaging and provocative analysis. He points out that a "longing for meaning" drives the increasing numbers of people who seek alternatives to Western medicine. Drawn to practices based on the concept of "chakras," or energy centers within the body, Brown is clearly sympathetic to alternative approaches, and he makes his exploration of the subject intensely personal. But his lively skepticism also leads him to question some tenets of spiritual healing and to acknowledge the real advances achieved by modern medical science. One of the book's best chapters brings the reader into the operating room of a cardiac surgeon as a bypass patient is helped during surgery by a healer who is present throughout the procedure. Another describes the complex feelings that evolve over Brown's long course of treatment with Rachel, an aspiring novelist as well as a healer, who reveals a disappointing egotism when she asks Brown to critique her newest manuscript. While this book offers no solid answers about how healing occurs, its value lies in the important questions it raises and in the genuine spirit of inquiry, buttressed by critical thinking, that Brown brings to his subject.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Brown has written a wonderful book. The award-winning journalist (formerly with the Washington Post, more recently with the New York Times Magazine and Vanity Fair) was introduced to energy medicine and healing through an assignment he wangled from The New Yorker. "I wanted to explore the flaky subject without having to own up to an unseemly personal interest in it," confesses Brown, and the reader of this book may feel the same way. This book is in parallel parts a historical overview of various alternative medicines in America and a first-person journey through their wildly different medical and political cultures. The surprise here is not the journalist's bright, readable style but his eclectic and far-ranging research. With meticulous references, Brown cites authors who are vital to the understanding of alternative medicine but who are ignored by most popular writers in the field. Believers and non-believers alike will be educated. Highly recommended for all libraries.?Catherine Arnott Smith, Predoctoral Research Fellow, Ctr. for Biomedical Informatics, Univ. of Pittsburgh
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.