The System of Healing Used by the Filipino Espiritistas
by
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I. INTRODUCTION
The practice of so-called psychic surgery in the
In the West, this practice would commonly constitute fraud since the medical establishment does not recognize the use of therapeutic sleight-of-hand, which, at best, is considered to evoke a placebo or expectation effect resulting in positive outcomes. In spite of significant results of placebo surgeries performed in the early 1950s by Henry Beecher and Leonard Cobb and associates (cited in Harrington, 1977, p. 22), prior to increased ethical restraints in the
The earliest accounts of psychic surgery were published by curiosity -seeking laypersons in search of “fantastic and unusual” phenomena in
).
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Abstract
the System of healing used by the Filipino espiritistas:
An Archival Study
Scott Matthew Taubold
The purpose of this dissertation was to describe the system of healing used by the Union of Espiritistas of the Philippines as perceived by the espiritistas themselves (in accordance with the National Institutes of Health Office of Alternative Medicine standards), from their own cultural context, not from the view of the parapsychological investigators, psychologists, medical doctors, alternative practitioners, and laypersons that have provided most of the existing information on Filipino healing practices.
The roles of indigenous healers were presented by prominent theorists, placing the practices of mediumship and psychic surgery into perspective as indigenous healing phenomena. The essential principles and common factors in healing as described in other systems of healing models were also presented. Following this description of the Filipino espiritistas’ indigenous healing system, while incorporating these essential elements of healing (according to the prominent systems of healing theorists), this author’s conclusion is that more research of indigenous healing practices in the Philippines is vital to a better understanding of the role of human consciousness in illness and healing experiences.
The research question was: What is the system of healing used by the Filipino espiritistas? The study concentrates on descriptions of the Filipino espiritistas’ system of healing in accordance with the parameters for a healing system presented in a journal article in Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, “Defining and Describing Complementary and Alternative Medicine” by O’Connor et al. (1997). Archival data were utilized in gathering the necessary information to develop a description of the Filipino espiritistas’ system of healing, and it was determined that the description meets the parameters of a system of healing as presented by O’Connor et al. to the U. S. National Institutes of Health Office of Alternative Medicine (NIHOAM).
About the Author
Scott Matthew Taubold, Ph, D., born in 1955, spent most of his life in a small isolated community in
There was a lot of support for learning about the effectiveness of indigenous healing systems at the University of Hawaii-West Oahu where Dr, Taubold obtained his Bachelor degree in Social Science with a concentration in psychology in 1995, and in the Masters of Science in Counseling Psychology program at Chaminade University in Honolulu where Dr. Taubold obtained his Masters degree in 1997. Following his return to Northern California Dr. Taubold enrolled in a distance learning program, Saybrook University of San Francisco and obtained a Ph. D. in Humanistic Psychology in May 2003 after completing this dissertation titled The System of Healing used by the Filipino Espiritistas.
Dr. Taubold has traveled to the