ABSTRACT
Theories of the real . . . control the vocabularies of healing. . . . If one could construct a map to negotiate a way through rival beliefs on health and healing, its baseline would be ontology, what counts as real. From this line a path would lead to the status of individuals in competing realities, then to different understandings of therapy that follow from competing descriptions of the human person. Finally, the moral and political languages of liberty, privacy, competence, and authority would appear. The first position, though, is reality. It fixes directions for the traveller journeying through the languages of health and healing, and provides the baseline references to justify beliefs about health acts and possibilities.
