The Healing of Persons

The renowned Swiss physician and psychiatrist opens wide the doorway to hope for the sick, the lonely, the troubled in spirit--a hope founded on a new awareness of the importance of the mind and spirit in healing. His approach to medicine treats the patient as a person, rather than as a mere case. He insists that the problems of the patient in his personal life, his relationships with his family, with his friends, with society, with the world, with God--all of these are contributing factors to physical illness. "All men," he says, "are struggling more or less consciously with personal problems which have a considerable influence on their health--conflicts, rebellions, negative attitudes, moral failings and spiritual anxieties." In his own medical practice Dr. Tournier deliberately restricts the number of his patients in order to give more time and personal attention to those he treats. THE HEALING OF PERSONS includes many of their case histories, illustrating again and again how the healing of the spirit is allied with the healing of the body. "All who read this book, both doctors and patients, must congratulate the author for having put his encouraging experiences withing the reach of everyone. It is profoundly human, and likely to disturb the conscience of all, and I am sure that many sufferers will find it, in the prayerful meditations which it enjoins, the beginning of their cure."--Dr. Georges Bickel, Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva