SITE OVERVIEW & NAVIGATION

The Section I. From Conformation to Transformation begins with a series of questions that seek to provide a background to what may be the seeds of our cultures “escalating uncertainty and elemental unrest.”

• We then move to post-Enlightenment psychology’s own critique of itself and the limits of the conscious mind. And quite interestingly, here, as has been fascinatingly argued, it may be that the “new discovery” of the unconscious was merely modern man struggling to come to terms with his new Enlightenment existence as an autonomous mind without a spirit. Yet, as became especially clear at the turn of last century, the conscious level mind could not adequately account for nor fully explain the totality of human experience. Indeed, it has become a “stranger to itself.”

  Spend enough time in medicine and you will find that this is exactly the case. Learning to treat the person in a reductionist fashion through the lens of data/labs/imaging alone may indeed lead to a diagnosis. And while that diagnosis may be accurate in certain terms, it’s eventual treatment reveals it to be an essentially superficial solution; it deals only with surface-layer, measurable consequences of that which is ultimately rooted in much deeper pathologies that our current reductionistic metrics cannot penetrate. This is the conundrum of modern medicine: Massive investment in newer, more advanced empirical tools, measurements and treatments, yet, all the while, the deeper pathologies that are crushing our patients evade our technocratic efforts. In short, advances in medical technology are rapidly expanding; yet, our patients’ disorders and maladies all the while continue to grow.

  How, then, is our work we in medicine able to contribute towards real healing in our patients? As opposed to simply offering to the broken foundations of medicine some sort of new metric of spirituality? Or, to put it another way, we can ask, “Is it even possible to build systems of care for the whole person upon the such broken foundations of the medical-industrial complex? With these questions come the next segments.

• We transition next to the uniting discoveries of Realist Epistemology with a focus first on Michael Polanyi, a brilliant physical chemist and later keen analyst of the philosophy of science in the mid-20th century. From him we come to Thomas F. Torrance, a theologian, professor, as well as great friend and colleague of Polanyi who became his literary executive before he died. With these two figures helping to reorient us in the disorder of our Hypermodernist Era, we then move to resources for formation of the physician that are rooted in the wisdom of the Patristic Era combined with the continual application of the Living Word. Here will be posted word studies that trace the life of key words through their living narrative in the OT and NT Scriptures. In this way, the Scriptures themselves, as opposed to our cultural preconceptions, can guide our understanding of the Word. As Torrance wrote, we do not project onto Scripture a “conceptual framework” foreign to it, but rather allow the Word itself to determine the grounds on which we can come to better and more appropriately grasp it.
  
  

• Section II. Transfiguration: The New Life & Community of Medicine connects us to modern examples of the true integration of medicine with vital orthodox spirituality, focusing on key figures, examples and research to this end.

  • We start with the work of Dan Fountain who constructed a comprehensive primary healthcare infrastructure in the entirety of the Democratic Republic of Congo from the years of 1961-1996. His experiences in the practice of medicine that were vitally integrated with spirituality within a community of redemptive love and care produced real physiologic effects on the patient. As just one introductory example, Fountain’s teams learned to literally reconstitute the immune system of persons with advanced AIDS in the 1980’s prior to the advent of ARV’s (See the Forward to this book for details). After these and countless other paradigm-shifting experiences overseas, he became increasingly burdened to work out a scientific and theological construct for what he had experienced. On his return to the U.S. in 1996, he continued working in patient care yet moved his focus to writing and developing coursework for physicians. With the aid of Sherry O’Donnell, he developed a series of 20 video lectures that we present in this section. (These were, at one point, mandatory training for MedSend recipients who were embarking on long term work in medical missions.)

  • Next is the presentation of what we are calling “paradigm-shifting patient cases”, the goal of which is to offer a what we may describe as qualitative data on unique patient histories that, in many ways, have opened us up to dimensions of medicine for which our training did not account.

  • From here we give a list of links to ongoing work of this integration of medicine and spirituality from across the country, occurring both on an academic and practitioner level.

  • We then present our Research Advisory Board, a team of ten figures from the fields of research, philosophy, theology, poetry psychology and psychiatry whom we have brought together to help us develop metrics that can be utilized in real-time patient care so as to more comprehensively capture exactly those dimensions in our patients’ lives that are critical to both better understanding their person and better formulating targeted treatment models.

  • The final segment will begin presenting longitudinal observational data from an integrated clinic system examining the intersection between the six domains of human flourishing, the experience of suffering, and the degree of religious commitment with the modifying factor of childhood trauma. The study, entitled The Paradox of Flourishing, is a mixed methods study with an explanatory sequential design that is a long term research venture into each of these domains, which will function as a starting point for the development of further, focused, integrated research.

    
    

• Section III. Fellowship Training offers an overview of a one year advanced practice provider fellowship in the above clinic system.

  • The design of the curriculum is briefly presented with an overview of the spiritual integration built into the clinic training. And, finally, the opportunity to participate in the above research is given.

  • The contact information is below, if you should have any questions.

• Section IV. is comprised of three categories of writings that serve to further supplement all that is above:

  • The Life of Words: Hebrew & Greek Word Studies, which is a series of Scriptural word studies foundational to our apprehension of pathways forward.

  • Poetry & Prose offers both translations of new poetry from members of our Research Advisory Board as well as presentation and analyses of already published poems that offer to our typically reductionistic, Western medical mind a more integrated approach to the understanding of illness and treatment.

  • The final section, entitled, Syntheses, presents writings that seek to tie together strains from theology, philosophy and poetry into the larger discussions regarding the current state of medicine.

Contact:
holosanthropos@gmail.com