ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I attempt to trace the essential historical thread in the nature of the socially recognized healer, which has to be plucked back into the contemporary tapestry of multiple therapies and expanding technologies so that we can both understand where we are at present and preserve our age-old direction. I discuss how much of psychiatry in the past two centuries has been driven by metaphors derived from science and technology in other fields in ways that have sometimes been helpful but often been harmful to patients. Last, I point out how the ongoing medical tradition of the healer offers a much needed corrective to the excesses of scientism. Attempting to do all this in a short chapter is a bit like writing War and Peace on the head of a pin. This is perhaps to the good, if the effect is similar to that of hearing one of Father Guido Sarducci's speeches-the audience may be left retaining a few things after a long talk.
