The persistence of magic and religion in contemporary medicine and psychotherapy

Abstract

An examination of the ostensibly secular, modern and scientific fields of medicine and psychotherapy reveals the persistence of religious, primitive and magical thinking. Practitioners appear to meet the public demand for magical enactments at least half-way. In doing so, they may persist with practices despite evidence of its ineffectiveness, or with disregard for the question of its effectiveness altogether, or with imperviousness to the discouragingly weak therapeutic effects reported in scientific papers. Examples are drawn from coronary surgery, contemporary psychoanalysis and group analysis. The situation for group analysis is of special interest.