Saturday, February 3, 2018

The Royal Road to Healing


The [Icelandic] Royal Road to Healing: a bit of a saga
Getz L, Kirkengen AL, Petursson H, Sigurdsson JA.
BMJ. 2011 Dec 19;343:d7826.  Free Full Text.

In the face of another person’s suffering, a listener can offer to be a competent, dedicated, and attentive co-thinker—not pretending to know the solution, but trusting the healing power inherent in an empathetic relationship.

[This essay] describes “the healing conversations between Ivar and King Eysteinn that took place almost 800 years before Sigmund Freud in 1895, formally presented the “talking cure.” King Eysteinn’s inquisitive style may not follow current advice regarding open, clinical communication. But it does build an elegant literary plot, which culminates beautifully, as the king abandons the idea that he can find the solution to Ivar’s suffering and reveals his insight into the healing powers of a respectful human relationship.

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Introduction

In 1885, when John Shaw Billings started the database which would, over time, morph into PubMed he recognized the hopelessness o...