Dear Nikola,

As we recently discussed, I find uniquely stimulating speaking to a listener, or in this case writing to a reader who will tolerate my intellectual eccentricities.  A letter such as this has the additional advantage, that when written in a fugue of self-deception it may, in the end, be relegated to the computer files, and perhaps to the web-site, without being sent at all. Consequently I will accept the uncertainty of its perhaps being suppressed, while as I write, enticing myself with the illusion, and writing as if I would send it after all.

The thought which inebriates me, and which to exhale is the design of this letter, is that the esthetically agonizing and emotionally painful anatomic dissections with constitute the heartless initiations of all modern medical education are in fact the uncompromising vehicles of the thereafter indelible and unforgettable teaching that man is "nothing but" this rotting stinking decaying disintegrating body.  Obviously and undeniably, this message is the source and seed of the extraordinary development of modern medical diagnosis, and of surgical, pharmacological, antibiotic, dietetic and physiotherapeutic treatment.  Less obvious, and systematically denied in practice, especially in neurology and psychiatry are the circumstance that all "physical" illness has emotional, spiritual, (geistige) concomitants.  I resort to the term spiritual as the replacement for the "palpably" prejudiced and prejudicial term "emotional" which excludes the intellect, the processes of thought and denies the effect of the intellect on health, which is deemed purely physical. The consequences of this misuse of language become apparent with the introduction of the concept psycho-somatic, so obviously a contradiction of the notion that the human being is "nothing" but its body.

As a result of this materialistic prejudice of the exclusive primacy of the body, emotional health and illness are inaccessible to reason, to diagnosis and to treatment. The obvious challenge is to devise a framework, to define a set of parameters in which spiritual well-being and illness may be defined and subjected to diagnosis and treatment. I do not think these desiderata will be found in the stars.

Best wishes to you and your parents.

EJM