Questions:
- Is holism about treatment?
- Is there such thing as a holistic therapist or is there only a holistic way of understanding a person with the view to intervening therapeutically?
Surgery can be as holistic as arnica and vice versa. Holism is not about treating the whole person. The practitioner who starts at the patient’s feet and treats everything up to their head may not be using a holistic approach. Similarly, a therapist that does acupuncture, prescribes homoeopathic remedies, uses hypnotherapy and manipulates a few dysfunctional joints is most probably unlikely to be feeling secure in any of those therapeutic disciplines.
Mixing therapeutic approaches which come from different conceptual backgrounds may not produce the best therapeutic result and may not suggest a well thought out evaluation / treatment direction.
Holism is a way of thinking it is a concept, which like all concepts exists as a framework to give meaning to Information. From a therapeutic point of view, it is all the information which comes to one individual from another individual.
Key concept; Holism is not concerned with the nature of parts, but the relationship of the parts.
Stephen Tyreman 1992. Concepts for Osteopathic Health Care, Section 4. General Systems Theory. BSO course notes (extracts)