This book presents attitudes, information, and tools for a holistic approach to medicine, health, and mental health. In our discussions among ourselves and with the contributing authors we defined three aspects of a holistic approach. First, such an approach involves expanding our focus to include the many personal, familial, social, and environmental factors that promote health, prevent illness, and encourage healing. Second, a holistic approach views the patient as an individual person, not as a symptom-bearing organism. This attitude emphasizes the self-responsibility of the person for his or her health and the importance of mobilizing the person's own health capacities, rather than treating illness only from the outside. Third, the holistic approach tries to make wise use of the many diagnostic, treatment, and health modalities that are available in addition to the standard materia medica- including alternative medical and healing systems as well as psychological techniques and physical modalities. Some of these methods of treatment and health practices are already accepted, others are accepted but not applied in practice, and still others need further research to explore the range of their uses.
Arthur Hastings, Ph.D. Research associate, Institute of Noetic Sciences, San Francisco, California; professor, California Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Menlo Park, California; adjunct professor, John F. Kennedy University, Orinda, California. Coauthor of Argumentation and Advocacy, Group Communication Through Computers, vol. 2, and Changing Images of Man.
James Fadiman, Ph.D. Lecturer, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California; professor, California Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Menlo Park, California. Coauthor (with Robert Frager) of Personality and Personal Growth; editor of Exploring Madness, The Proper Study of Man; and coeditor of Relax.
James S. Gordon, M.D. Research psychiatrist and consultant on alternative forms of service, Center for Studies of Child and Family Mental Health, National Institute of Mental Health, Rockville, Maryland. Author of Special Study of Alternative Services: Report to the President's Commission on Mental Health and Caring for Youth: Essays on Alternative Services; coeditor and contributor to Mind, Body and Health: Toward an Integral Medicine (in press).
