ABSTRACT
The most radical critiques of contemporary medical science and the health-care industry have come from individuals and organizations within the holistic health movement. Holistic health first emerged as part of New Left social protest of the 1960s and became strongly influenced by both the radical counterculture and the women's health movement. Holism involves a particular way of seeing relationships. It contrasts with the "reductionism" that underlies science, bureaucracy, and technocratic management more generally. In place of patriarchal or bureaucratic relationships, the holistic health movement accented equalitarian, emotionally supportive interactions, with practitioners offering resources to be used by clients rather than taking control of the health process. The ideas and organizational approaches of the holistic health movement, born in the counterculture, were in the beginning controversial. The holistic health movement's radical reconceptualization of issues and strategies for health care was criticized from many perspectives, once it was being taken seriously by important institutional interests.
