Printed book: $24.95

Stephen Aizenstat and Robert Bosnak, Eds.

Imagination & Medicine

The Future of Healing in an Age of Neuroscience

212 pages, ISBN 978-1-882670-62-8, Spring Journal

In this groundbreaking collection of essays, medical scientists from the fields of psychoneuroimmunology, neuroscience, and the placebo effect join with practitioners from the fields of non-Western medicine--the Asklepieia, body/soul therapies, and dreamwork--to explore the intimate relationship between imagination and physical health. By looking at medical science, present and past, native and modern, these scholars, physicians, and healers offer their vision of what medical treatment and psychotherapy might look like in the future. Artists and architects with expertise in health care also describe and present new designs for healing centers that bring together current scientific knowledge and age-old healing practices. This collection will be of great interest to those looking to the future in the fields of therapy, medicine, and the healing professions.

Contents:
Preface by Stephen Aizenstat
Coming to a Door by Marion Woodman
The Physician Inside by Robert Bosnak
ORIGINS
1. Ancient Asklepieia: Institutional Incubation and the Hope of Healing by Kimberley Patton
2. Healing the Soul in a Culture of Fear by Michael Kearney
3. Water Spirits, Multiple Sclerosis, and Poisoned of a God by Michael Ortiz Hill
4. The Imaginal Realm of Dissociation: The Archetypal Nature of Trauma in Light of Quantum Physics by Judith R. Harris
SCIENCE
5. Can Believing Make You Well? A Decade Later by Esther M. Sternberg
6. The Neural Bases of Placebo Effects in Pain by Lauren Y. Atlas and Tor D. Wager
7. How the Mind and the Brain Co-Create Each Other Daily by Ernest Lawrence Rossi and Kathryn Lane Rossi
8. Clinical Implications of Neuroscience Research in PTSD by Bessel A. van der Kolk
9. Imagination and Medicine: Reply to Bessel van der Kolk by Richard Kradin
HEALING SPACE
10. Re-imagining the Architecture of Healing by Anthony Lawlor
Contributor Biographies

About the Editors:

Stephen Aizenstat, Ph.D., is the founding president of Pacifica Graduate Institute, a private graduate school offering M.A. and Ph.D. programs in psychology, mythological studies, and the humanities. Dr. Aizenstat is a Clinical Psychologist, a Marriage Family Therapist, and a credentialed public schools teacher and counselor. His areas of emphasis include depth psychology, dream research, and imaginal and archetypal psychology. A major focus of Dr. Aizenstat’s original research is a psychodynamic process of “tending the living image,” particularly in the context of dreamwork. He extends this work in ways that engage the healing forces of dreams through imaginal “medicines.” He is the author of the book Dream Tending (Spring Journal Books, 2009).

Robert Bosnak, PsyA, a Zürich-trained Jungian analyst, has since 1972 led dream groups and explored dreaming with individuals, in both analytical and didactic contexts, developing a method called Embodied Imagination. Embodied Imagination, in the work with dreams and waking memories, is practiced individually and in groups in psychotherapy, medicine, theater, art, and creative research. It was a rehearsal technique of the Royal Shakespeare Company in England, and applied in medical research and psychotherapyin Japan, China, and various Western countries. Robert Bosnak has authored several books: A Little Course in Dreams; Dreaming with an Aids Patient; and Tracks in the Wilderness of Dreaming. His latest book (2007) is Embodiment: Creative Imagination in Medicine, Art, and Travel. He is past president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams and is currently based in Sydney.