Compassion and Healing in Medicine and Society: On the Nature and Use of Attachment Solutions to Separation Challenges

by Fricchione, Gregory L., M.D.

• ISBN13: 9781421402208
• ISBN10: 1421402203
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-11-01
• Publisher: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIV PRESS

Summary

Reconciling the scientific principles of medicine with the love essential for meaningful care is not an easy task, but one that Greg L. Fricchione performs masterfully in Compassion and Healing in Medicine and Society. At the core of this book is a thought-provoking analysis of the relationship between evolutionary science and neuroscience. Fricchione theorizes that the cries for attachment made by seriously ill patients reflect an underlying evolutionary tenet called the separation challenge / attachment solution process. The pleadings of patients, he explains, are verbal expressions of the history of evolution itself. By exploring the roots of a patient's attachment needs, we come face to face with a critical component of natural selection and the evolutionary process. Medicine engages with the separation challenge / attachment solution process on many levels of scientific knowledge and human meaning and healing. Fricchione applies these concepts to medical care and encourages physicians to fully understand them so they can better treat their patients. Compassionate humanistic care promotes physical, emotional, and spiritual healing precisely because it is consonant with how life, the brain, and humanity have evolved. It is therefore not a luxury of modern medical care but an essential part of it. Fricchione advocates an attachment-based medical system, one in which physicians evaluate stress and resiliency and prescribe an integrative treatment plan for the whole person designed to accentuate the propensity to health. There is wisdom in a perennial philosophy based on compassionate love which, Fricchione stresses, the medical community must take advantage of in designing future health care -- and society must appreciate as it faces its separation challenges.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Introduction: Knowlege, Meaning, and Healing and the Consilience of Medicine	p. 1
The Medical Mission and Evolution	p. 3
Two Realms of KnowledgeùOr One?	p. 24
Knowledge, Meaning, and Healing	p. 36
The Biological Foundations of the Evolutionary Need For Attachment Solutions	p. 53
Evolution of the Protocell	p. 55
Cellular Evolution	p. 80
Animal Evolution	p. 96
The Foundations in Brain Evolution of Knowledge, Meaning, and Healing	p. 107
Evolution of the Brain	p. 109
Structuring the Brain to Know and Act	p. 144
Memory and Motivation	p. 168
Meaning, Healing, and the Brain	p. 187
The Neurobehavioral and Cultural Foundations of the Need for Attachment Solutions	p. 205
Separation, Attachment, and Human Development	p. 207
Separation, Attachment, and the Life Cycle	p. 225
The Social Neuroscience of Separation and Attachment	p. 238
Consciousness, Language, and Their Origins	p. 250
Evolutionary Consciousness	p. 271
Implications for Society, Culture, and Ethics	p. 299
The Theoretical Foundations of The Need for Attachment Solutions	p. 327
An Evolutionary True Cause?	p. 329
Investigating the Separation Challenge-Attachment Solution Hypothesis	p. 357
A Testable Hypothesis	p. 372
Analogies and Analysis	p. 393
The Implications of the Separation Challenge-Attachment Solution Hypothesis	p. 407
Implications for the Mission of Modern Medicine	p. 409
Implications for Medicine at the End of Life	p. 450
Postscript: A Commentary on Human Evolution	p. 461
References	p. 475
Index	p. 519
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