Healing : within a multi-layered, multi-dimensional paradigm

This research project was designed to assess the meanings residents of a mid-sized southeastern metropolitan area attach to their involvement in alternative or holistic health care programs. These programs have rarely been studied by social researchers and attention to them is particularly critical in light of the current unprecedented commitment of U.S. government leaders to redefine the medical institution through the establishment of a national health care plan. Key informants in a snowball sampling technique were used to locate 15 practitioners with established clienteles. Data were collected by means of survey questionnaires, long semi-structured interviews, and participant observation. Whenever the practitioners agreed, clients were also interviewed. Findings revealed that hands on, psychic, folk, and divine healing programs are well- established. They are supported by people who want to reach their "human potential" or recover functions lost to chronic diseases. Together these adherents to alternative or holistic health care programs support a loosely organized and non-combative social movement that has been gathering momentum especially since 1970. Adherents communicate and share resources through a complex set of networks. Recruitment tactics are incorporated within the seemingly innocuous efforts of the entrepreneurial or petty bourgeois practitioners to support themselves. This unrecognized social movement deserves consideration similar to that given the recognized new social movements. Although relatively uncontentious, it has a radical ideological and epistemological orientation. Its leaders advocate an extra-scientific understanding of reality and a new world view.