Would you like to know more facts and anecdotes about unexplained healings and deaths? (authoritative, placebo, situative, and self-suggested healing / voodoo, taboo, homesickness, and self-suggested death)
Would you like to know more far reaching, researched aspects of the mind-body problem? ("spiritual" healing / death prophecy, prophetic dreams, "spiritual" conscious dying, etc.)
Would you like to be informed about innovative, controversial hypotheses about the relationship between quantum physics and consciousness and its scientific basis? (Darwinian hypothesis as to the evolution of the various psychogenic healing and death forms, distant anticipation (mental telepathy) as an evolutionary "byproduct" of schizophrenia, distant mentation in living systems as an analogy to quantum-teleportation phenomenon etc.)
Would you like to find out about these things on a home page popularly written for a general lay public?
Then you can read all about it on this website as well as in my two books on psychogenic healing and psychogenic death which also provide much of the same - and additional - information in German.
Death is the last station in our mortal maturation process. No influence over life is more profound as that which accelerates or retards this process. Man has delegated this power traditionally to the gods and the stars. Is this why healers and murderers, each of whom reign over life and death in their own special way, achieve so much respect or fear from their fellow man?
True stories about healing and death by imagination - so-called "psychogenic" healing and death - can motivate you to a similar respect for your own power of imagination, for: We harbor within the mental potential for both, self-healing and self-extinguishing.
The real-life, true stories collected here are written for everyone, but may be particularly useful for psychologists, psychiatrists, medical professionals and ethnologists, perhaps also for parapsychologists and persons attracted to esoterica.
Healing by Imagination
Imaginative Healing: Introduction
Optimism, a sense of personal control and the ability to find meaning in one's life experiences are valuable psychological resources which can be life-saving in times of physical illness or mental distress (Taylor, Kemeny, Reed, Bower, & Gruenewald, 2000). By simply "flipping the sign", these resources suddenly correspond to the three facets of a deadly «cage situation» leading to psychogenic death, namely, hopelessness, helplessness and "escapelessness".
The power of life is just as self emergent as the power of death and the power of our imagination exudes a certain influence over both (Schmid 2009, 2010). The power of imagination over this self-emergent life force has to do with our subjective feeling of time and the nature of our human relationships. To understand this better, it is helpful to look at the spatial picture of the above-mentioned «cage situation» from a temporal perspective:
To "flip the sign" on feeling trapped, look back into your past, that is, on previous attempts at solutions or on past successful solutions which you have already tried or had actually found for difficult situations similar to the present one. No one is able to tell you the meaning of it all: You have to search for the meaning of these past life experiences by defining it for yourself! I have a saying I like to use here: "Once is accident, twice is coincident, three times is evident!" If you've had a similar kind of problem three times, then there's very likely a pattern in what's going on, partly because of you, partly because of the situation and conditions you are in. Open up your curiosity and look for it! It's the final whole which lends the parts their original meaning.
To "flip the sign" on feeling helpless, look for solutions here and now, in the present. Take things actively into your own hands as best you can: Doing anything you feel might be proper, now, is better than doing nothing until you think you know for sure what to do later! There's another saying I like to use here: "How do I know what I think until I feel what I do?!" Take it to heart and live by it! Life is like learning to play a music instrument: Make roughly the right motions and then correct them!
To "flip the sign" on feeling hopeless, look positively into the future! Be optimistic even if this means being unrealistic! Plant your fantasy in reality and then let it grow into a vision for the future!
To break through your emotional isolation, look in the mirror of your Self!
The question now remains: Can your power of imagination over this life force also be used as a healing force? My answer is simple: If human beings are able to imagine their bodies to death, then it is a simple logical conclusion that they can just as well heal themselves by the power of imagination. After all, the most powerful influence for the mind to possibly have over the human body is one that can imagine it to death, so that, if the imagination can indeed kill the body, it can most certainly heal it! Indeed, as the following quote shows, the idea that the power of imagination can heal has its origins in ancient traditions:
"Sokrates told his Grecian colleagues that the barbaric Thracians are more advanced than the civilized peoples in at least one point. They knew that the body cannot be healed without the mind. 'For this reason', he advanced, 'it is impossible for the doctors of Hellas to heal many illnesses because they know nothing of this relationship.'" (Wright, 1958, Introduction)
Death as well as health are not only physical but also mental phenomena, even if this fact is sometimes difficult to reconcile with a narrow-minded, scientific picture of the world. Nevertheless, the repression of this fact, namely, the fact that imagination has the power to heal as well as to kill, still occurs today and can sometimes take on foolish, yes, even grotesque forms, especially in so-called enlightened academic circles (Henschel 2000). In this regard and with a certain tongue-in-cheek, satiric undertone, one could say: A body of thought is not a refrigerator! In other words, new, unusual or uncomfortable ideas which don't happen to fit nicely into our established scientific way of looking at the world, or into any other system of belief for that matter, are - in crass opposition to the design of any refrigerator - not guaranteed for use by idiots! Ridiculing or denying the reality of psychogenic death or healing shows the extent to which rational thought can regress when confronted with the mysteries of the irrational.
Death is the last stage in every individuated human maturation process. Like any healthy step along the natural human development of the individual, it should be accomplished with a certain sense of freedom within security, of personal control within love, of optimism within courage, and under the preservation of a deeper sense of the meaning and dignity of life. Someone who cannot consciously allow themself the freedom, the ability, the hope, the security, the love and the courage to live, or someone who suddenly and unexpectedly looses the deeper sense of the meaning and dignity of life endangers themself with a weakened immune system or may even become victim of a tragic psychogenic death: the sudden and unexpected occurence of a mentally triggered death, a death with no primary physiological cause, a death which - with few exceptions - does not consummate a socially integrated, personal individuation but, rather, prematurely extinguishes an isolated life in a most tragic manner. My research is an attempt to shed some light upon the shadows of such tragedies. It is my intention to thereby gain a trace of insight into the power of imagination, amongst other things into the Gestalt-Principle of the mind-body isomorphism, the biunity of mind and body, in order to be able to enlighten the path along the way to finding better methods for psychogenic healing.
A few words of caution before proceeding
Although I am personally convinced that psychogenic healing is indeed a reality, it nevertheless seems to me much more difficult to believe stories about healing by the power of imagination than it is to rely upon reports of psychogenic death. As already mentioned above, my overall belief in claims of imaginative healing stems from logically "flipping the sign" on psychogenic death reports, the majority of which can be found published in well-established scientific journals (usually in the fields of medicine or psychology) in which all articles have been refereed by professionals before appearing in print.
Unfortunately, the latter is usually not the case for articles on psychogenic healing methods. This problem probably has its origins in the human desparation behind healing, namely, that it must work, in comparison to the horror underlying psychogenic death and the hope that maybe it doesn't work after all: We all want to stay healthy and be healed when sick; no one wants to die from black magic! As a result, we seem to be less critical of claims of healing by imagination than we should be.
Although our imagination can accomplish much more for our health and well-being than we might think, it can accomplish very much less than we might want! Depending on how sick we are, how much in pain or near death we may be, there are virtually no limits to our gullibility or willingness to pay for a "miracle". Everybody knows this - we feel it inside - and so it's easy to understand that many unscrupulous persons take advantage of this fact and are willing to make the most fantastic claims about their ability as healers. There's a lot of money to be earned here! On the other hand, there is much less financial gain to be made with reports of psychogenic death, many of which deal with phenomena like voodoo, taboo, homesickness and sudden unexpected death behind which there is no individual agent (person, institution etc.) who can make a monetary gain directly or indirectly by the truth of the issue. That's a good part of the reason why my academic research began by focussing upon the phenomenon of psychogenic death. This is the way I have personally chosen to gain insight into the reality of imaginative healing in order to better develop my own practical approach to the imaginative healing methods which I put to use in my private psychotherapy practice in Zürich.
Death by Imagination
Psychogenic death - triggered by mental influence / consummated by incarnated imagination: The most dramatic example of the power of inner pictures and the spoken word over life. The corresponding anecdotes and facts about Voodoo-, Taboo-, Homesickness-death and deadly Catatonia and the conclusions drawn from them confirm the strength of our inner attitude over life, health and death.
The real-life, true stories available below prove that there are
unquestionably powerful individuals(voodoo)
incontestably sacrosanct prohibitions regarding certain objects, places or times (taboo)
inescapeably helpless and hopeless situations of emotional isolation (homesickness)
with which persons entangle their life principle to such an extent that they will die if they find out or imagine that one of the above conditions compels them to.
Furthermore, in the course of evolution, human beings have developed an inherent intuitive ability for distant anticipation, namely, for distant mentation in living systems (DMILS), which can evoke a fourth form of death by imagination which I have chosen to call Spiritual Death: Unconscious physiological life processes can, particularly in the case of genetically predisposed individuals, be intensely entangled with inner pictures to such a degree that an especially sensitive person can die from imagining lethal ideas associated with those pictures essential to their life principle, for example, from imagining deadly persecution or eternal solitary confinement etc.. Persons very vulnerable to DMILS might be particularly susceptible to psychopathologically developing such lethal ideas as a result of trying to cope with unwanted distant information which they eavesdrop ("quantum eavesdropping") from the social group (neighbors etc.) without ever wanting to.
On the one hand, a genetic predisposition to DMILS could have an effect on the health of the individual by providing an additional quantum phenomenological control mechanism which works (via the quantum mechanical probability field) in parallel to anatomical, chemical and electrical influences within the body and, in particular, helps guarantee the context-related, organised (in the sense of binding) information processing of the mind-brain. Such a DMILS predisposition could also be just as useful to help guarantee the social cooperation of members who have been "quantum physically entangled" with the group, for example, via appropriate initiation ordeals during puberty.
On the other hand, and within the context of psychogenic death phenomena, this very same intrinsic, distant social anticipation and cooperation ("quantum symbiosis") could amplify the mortal effect of collective beliefs upon the victim of a death curse, taboo break or isolation in the sense of a focused excommunication and banishment which amplifies the giving-up/given-up complex of the cursed, guilty or imprisoned individual to a deadly degree. Furthermore, this very same intrinsic feeling of belonging together shared at the unconscious level by the "righteous" group could amplify the feeling of being different and of lonliness of the outsider, in particular, of the homesick foreigner.
Once again, the ideas touched upon here have already been presented in detail in my above-mentioned SPRINGER book to which a corresponding link is provided below.
Following is a Data Bank containing real-life, true stories of Voodoo Death, Taboo Death, Homesickness Death and Spiritual Death and related incidences which I have gathered from the scientific literature and published in my SPRINGER book. I also have many more stories than these which I will slowly translate from the original German sources and gradually include in the Data Bank. Furthermore, I hope to have your help - see below - to obtain even more true-life stories than those now available in the scientific literature.
INTRODUCTION
The power of imagination lies in a hypnotic mental state of expectant attention and quantum symbiosis with the social group which can heal as well as kill. Certain situations under special conditions can involuntarily (unconsciously) induce this mental state in a person beyond their rational control, especially if they have been quantum physically entangled with one another, in particular, with a group leader, priest or healer - see discussion above.
VOODOO DEATH: Can a person die from a curse?
Voodoo is a magical power (also called "black magic", if used maliciously) over life, death, matter and spirit which is unquestionably believed to lie in the hands of certain prominent individuals like a chief, priest or medicine man. A person could recover from a mortal illness or die in spite of good health if they believe themself to be blessed or cursed by someone they presume to possess the power of Voodoo. It has been estimated that roughly one third of the population of New Orleans believes in Voodoo and that the world-wide community of Voodoo believers encompasses as many as 300 million people (Urbe, W. B. (2000, 16./17. December). Do you Voodoo in New Orleans? die tageszeitung)! Voodoo has even gained (sceptical) acceptance in medicine, especially in psychiatry where Voodoo doctors have been engaged, for example, at the University of Mississippi Medical School for the treatment of paranoic schizophrenia. If you want to find out more about Voodoo first hand, I suggest a trip to New Orleans where you can visit Marie Laveau`s House of Voodoo (739 Bourbon Street), the Voodoo Museum (724 Dumaine Street), the Voodoo Spiritual Temple (828 North Rampart Street) and the grave of the most famous Voodoo queen of all times, Marie Laveau, at the St. Louis Cemetery No.1.(Basin Street).
TABOO DEATH: Can a person die if he or she breaks a Taboo?
A Taboo is an incontestably sacrosanct prohibition regarding certain objects, places or times. If a person breaks a Taboo, then he or she will automatically and irrevocably be stigmatized by and banished from the social group such that any further encounter with him or her is now also taboo. In short, a Taboo is a prohibition which, if you should violate it, you will also become taboo and, consequently, will immediately become forever marked and excommunicated. A person could die if they break a taboo.
HOMESICKNESS DEATH: Can a person die from the hopelessness of a helpless situation from which they cannot escape?
Homesickness is suffering an inescapeably helpless and hopeless state of emotional isolation which I call a "cage situation". On the one had, a person can at best strengthen his or her immune system or recover from an illness if he or she enjoys a certain feeling of freedom within the comfort of being home again ("nest feeling"; AMAE principle). On the other hand, a person could die if they are convinced that they can never again reestablish emotional encounter with the person, thing, place or situation under the previous conditions they are longing for, i.e., if they find themselves in a cage situation.
SPIRITUAL DEATH: Can a person die from a neurosis, psychosis or some other mental or spiritual condition, e.g., enlightenment?
Everybody possesses an inherent intuitive ability for distant anticipation, namely, for distant mentation in living systems (DMILS), which now and again arises autonomously. We often understand the corresponding intuitive experiences as belonging to our spiritual life. Such spiritual experiences correlate to unconscious physiological life processes. These can, particularly in the case of genetically predisposed individuals suffering from a neurosis, psychosis or some other mental or spiritual condition, be intensely entangled with inner pictures to such a degree that an especially sensitive person can die from imagining lethal ideas associated with those pictures essential to their life principle, for example, from imagining deadly persecution or the call of God to pass over to the "other side" etc.. This leads then to a fourth form of death by imagination which I have chosen to call Spiritual Death.
DISCUSSION
Within the context of Darwinian evolution theory it is reasonable to assume that the various forms of death by imagination developed essentially as unfortunate "side-effects" of corresponding survival advantages (obediance to a group leader, obeyal of group ordinances, adherence to home territory, distant anticipation while hunting-gathering and mate-seeking) which presumably had already been developed by the time homo sapiens came around as a hunting-gathering species about 10'000 years ago.
Finally, I would like to emphasize that my research has led me to understand that there is no definite, unique boundary between mind and body. The definition of a boundary between soma and psyche is of practical, medical significance but has no claim to truth. The theory of the tiniest and most elementary things, namely, quantum theory, teaches us: Such a boundary only exists after having been defined on purpose but its location is more or less arbitrary while leaving the actual psychological and physiological facts, before and after its definition, steadfastly unchanged regardless of where it may or may not have been placed.
Literature
Henschel, G. (2000). Heimkehr zweier Sterne. Liebende Quantenverschränkung bis in den Voodootod. Psychologie Heute, 7(Juli), 80-81.
Schmid GB (2009) Tod durch Vorstellungskraft: Das Geheimnis psychogener Todesfälle (2. ed.). Springer-Verlag, Wien.
Schmid GB (2010) Selbstheilung durch Vorstellungskraft (1. ed.). Springer-Verlag, Wien.
Taylor, S. E., Kemeny, M. E., Reed, G. M., Bower, J. E., & Gruenewald, T. L. (2000). Psychological Resources, Positive Illusions, and Health. American Psychologist, 55(1), 99-109.
Wright, H. B. (1958). Zauberer und Medizinmänner: Augenzeugenberichte von seltsamen Heilmethoden und ihren Wirkungen auf primitive Menschen. Zürich: Orell Füssli.
