This is an impressive work for a private practitioner, with no funding from an academic institute to support her effort. Ilene is to be applauded for the enormity of the effort. She has (with aid from many other named in these volumes) pulled together a wide variety of work to compile a 3 volume set called “Whole Person Healthcare”. An attempt to think forward to a more integrated state of how we might best integrate our current system of allopathic and all other alternative medical interventions, it is a humanistic collection, as revealed in the subtitle of Vol. 1 “Humanizing Healthcare”.
More an overview and an urging, this volume has various authors discussing not just the need for healthcare integration, but also offering very general ideational pieces on how this might work. Those looking for specific details about how this might be done will have to look elsewhere – this book is more aspirational than functional, and is most likely to find it’s place among students of Public Health Administration and those looking to gain a beginners understanding of what healthcare integration is all about. It does contain an impressive list of contributors from Dean Ornish and David Siegel, and our presidential candidate Margy Heldring.
Vol. 2, “Psychology, Spirituality and Health” addresses the roles of various kinds of spiritual experience in healthcare, but goes far beyond the bounds of traditional Western beliefs to Eastern thought, and begins to introduce us to yoga and meditation and health, and has a most intriguing chapter “The Psychological and Spiritual Challenges Inherent in Dying Well” by David Feinstein. For me the most interesting piece in this volume, it takes a philosophical and psychological approach to death, and offers some practical input for this looming role all will play.
“The Arts and Health” finishes the trilogy, with a broad overview of a number of artistic mediums and their use in healthcare. Music, Dance, Drama, Poetry, Visual Arts are all represented. For those interested in expanding their practice far beyond the bounds of traditional spoken word, this volume offers a primer on these areas, and references allowing one to go deeper.
It seems unlikely most clinicians would wish all 3 volumes, and selective purchasing is likely in order here. It seems certain some of these texts will find their way as recommended reading in some of the more experimentally advanced training programs in the country. The material is indeed beyond the scope of what most psychologists are now practicing, but then again, California is almost always far ahead of what the rest of the country will catch up to at some later point. Let us hope that the next 50 years finds much of this work coming true.
Ed Lundeen is the immediate past editor or the IP, and can be reached at romaedl@juno.com
