Spirituality, Healing and Medicine

David Aldridge is Professor of Qualitative Research in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Witten-Herdecke. He is author of Music Therapy Research and Practice in Medicine: From Out of the Silence (1996) and Suicide: The Tragedy of Hopelessness (1998) also published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

I warmed to this fine book, both for the subject matter and its sanity. The book is worth its cover price for the second chapter alone. There are sections on "Science and Religion as Ways of Knowing", "Spirituality and Religion in Medicine", "Meanings", Transcendence", "Vital Energy", "A Postmodern perspective", "Belief in Action", and "A Challenge to Science". It is difficult to summarise the wisdom contained here. I admire the author's occasional blunt honesty. He writes for example, "Even within modern medicine, we have difficulty in defining health". It is important to realise that health is so much more than the simple absence of symptoms." This is a rich and rewarding book, though application and discernment are both required to get the best from it. Psychiatrists familiar with John Swinton's remarkable "Spirituality and Mental Health Care" will naturally seek out and absorb the wisdom of this excellent companion volume, covering different but closely related ground. Many discerning health care workers, keeping abreast of developments in human spirituality relevant to our inter-related professions, will want to read it too. The true bonds, holding us all together, are after all spiritual in nature.

• 1. Healing narratives in the context of a performed life. 2. Meaning, purpose and power. 3. Religion: The everyday forms of spiritual life. 4. Lifestyle, charismatic ideology and a praxis aesthetic. 5. Lost and found. The perpetual story. 6. Prayer and healing. 7. Pluralism and treatment: Healing today. Index.