ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the dynamics of psychotherapeutic healing in a contextual ®eld that links quantum ®eld research with mystical experience and clinical theory. The intention is to rethink the way in which clinical theory conceptualizes and contextualizes the therapeutic process. It has been argued, that clinical theory and practice always relate to an underlying clinical paradigm (GruÈnbaum 1984; Heuer 1998; Papadopoulos 2006). Here `clinical paradigm' will be approached as a set of basic assumptions ± about the nature of reality, causality, illness and health and their interrelation ± that make up the analyst's felt experience of clinical reality. Such underlying assumptions tend to colour and shape clinical discourse in clinical practice teaching, supervision and clinical writing. The main question posed in this chapter is whether the current post-Jungian clinical paradigm is preoccupied with notions of illness rather than notions of health. In other words, is there the assumption underlying clinical practice that a preoccupation with illness or pathology will somehow bring about positive change or health? How are health and healing assumed to come about clinically? Does healing have to be predicated on suffering? And ®nally, is it possible to imagine a clinical paradigm preoccupied with notions of health and healing, rather than suffering ± a `sanatology' rather than a pathology? Such shifts would need to be anchored in shifting views of the nature of reality, as evidenced in quantum ®eld research and theory, and which now emerge in many sciences (including biology, biochemistry, mathematics, medicine, philosophy, physics). Very broadly speaking, research ®ndings suggest an emergent worldview that resonates strongly with the mystical universe, which informs much of Jung's clinical psychology. In this chapter, I shall argue that, in our ®eld, the implications of quantum ®eld research lead to a `sanatology' ± a clinical theory of health and healing, which complements the ever growing complexity of clinical knowledge in the area of pathology. Finally, I shall outline the epistemological shifts based on quantum ®eld theory, which might contribute to a clinical discourse of
health and healing where the dynamics of pathology might be a somewhat lesser and receding preoccupation.
