E K Ledermann
Shaftesbury: Element 1997; £8.99
ISBN 1862040567

I wanted this book to offer some insight into "alternative" styles of medical practice, to present its arguments clearly, and to offer something illuminating. Instead I found myself frustrated and annoyed by its failure to deliver much beyond glib assertion and pious moralising.

In fairness, however, the author's intentions in writing this book are admirable. As a psychiatrist and practitioner of homoeopathy who is clearly disillusioned with the fundamental approach of "orthodox" or "scientific" medicine, he attempts to provide an antidote to the ills of modern medicine and society as a whole. Simply put, his thesis asserts that modern individuals are bereft of a spiritual and ethical conscience arising from their "true­selves." He believes that we have had our "core innateness" replaced with a "protean" self of no substance. From this flows the ills of modern life-suicide, drugs, depression, and disenchantment. In turn, doctors have failed to address this spiritual vacuum with a mechanistic science that cannot encompass such concepts.

To this extent, his ideas may find some resonance with those who despair at the dysfunction of the world or wish for more humane medicine. He then goes on to assert that only "holistic" remedies can address this crisis of the self from which illness stems. Fine, except that his solutions are so simplistic (smoke and drink less, sit upright, embrace anything "natural," and so on) and hardly radical or challenging to medical principles. His ideas, perhaps, carry more weight when addressing the failure of "scientific" (controversial) psychotherapies as opposed to his style of "true self " mental healing.

He proclaims that a reductionist medicine is unable to address the needs that "holism" can. Such an ideological split is artificial and unhelpful. There are really only two forms of medicine, good and bad - and good "orthodox" medicine can always be holistic. Furthermore, the judgment of its value must surely rely on reason and sceptical debate rather than impassioned dogma and untested anecdote. There can be much wrong with modem medicine, yet this book chooses the wrong targets and offers largely vacuous remedies beyond recognising the clear need for medical practitioners who are attuned to the deepest needs of those they care for.