Holistic Sickening Breast Cancer and The

Sociology of Health & Illness Vol. 30 No. 4 2008 ISSN 01419889, pp.
616631
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.01076.x
Susan
Sociology
SHIL
0141-9889
Original
XXX
Holistic
2008Sered
Blackwell
Oxford, sickening
Foundation
Articles
UK of Health
and Amy
Publishing for
&Ltd
Illness
the
Agigian
Sociology of Health & Illness/Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Holistic sickening: breast cancer and the discursive worlds

of complementary and alternative practitioners
Susan Sered and Amy Agigian
Department of Sociology, Suffolk University, Boston, USA
Abstract This paper introduces the concept of holistic sickening to the sociological
literature on illness narratives. Drawing on interviews with 46 Boston-area
complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practitioners who treat breast
cancer patients, we found that the CAM practitioners redefine their patients
breast cancer diagnoses in ways that expand and transform their illness,
sometimes into a lifetime journey. The practitioners, for the most part, espouse
broad and complex etiological frameworks that help give meaning to the womans
cancer. They tend to speak about breast cancer as a symptom of problems
that exceed the cancer itself, at times suggesting that women are responsible, to
some extent, for their own breast cancer. The practitioners articulate holistic
philosophies that describe healing as open-ended with correspondingly expansive
definitions of what it means to be healed, rarely articulating clear ways of
conceptualising or measuring the efficacy of their own treatments. Their use of
expansive and detailed etiological frameworks alongside vague and unelaborated
efficacy frameworks make up the holistic sickening phenomenon described in
this paper.
Keywords: holistic healing, gender, breast cancer, etiology, alternative medicine
If one part of the body has a problem, every part of the body has a problem.
MW, traditional Chinese medicine practitioner
Introduction
According to American Cancer Society estimates, close to 212,920 new cases of breast
cancer were diagnosed in US women in 2006, making it the most commonly diagnosed
cancer in US women (American Cancer Society 2007).1 Breast cancer patients are among
the most avid seekers of complementary and alternative healing in the United States (Wyatt
et al. 1999, see also Wooddell and Hess 1998, Eisenberg et al. 1998). While studies have
looked at why some cancer patients turn to CAM (Boon et al. 2007, Maskarinec et al.
2001, Bishop et al. 2006, Henderson and Donatelle 2004, Shumay et al. 2001), little social
science research has explored how CAM practitioners interpret their own work; that is,
how they account for the high incidence of breast cancer in American women, the belief
systems that underlie their treatment modalities, or the ways in which they conceptualise
and measure the efficacy of their treatment. These considerations are important not only
2008 The Authors. Journal compilation 2008 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness/Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
Breast cancer and alternative medicine 617
because of the numbers of women affected by breast cancer and the enormous sums of
money spent on CAM,2 but also because breast cancer tends to be the disease women fear
most (even though women are more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than of all forms
of cancer combined (see Mayo Clinic 2005)). Pink ribbons and other public iconic displays
have constructed a contemporary breast cancer culture in which the disease is increasingly
treated as a somewhat normal part of the female lifecourse, and this cancers location in
the breast evokes deep feelings and images regarding gender, sexuality and motherhood
(see Lupton 1994, Luker et al. 1996 on the meanings that women ascribe to breast cancer).
Yet we know little about the conceptualisations of breast cancer held by the CAM
practitioners who treat the large numbers of women who seek their care.
To address these issues, during 2002 and 2003 a team of researchers at Harvard Universitys
Center for the Study of World Religions conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with 46
Boston-area CAM practitioners who treated breast cancer patients. While our original
research plan focused primarily on conceptualisations and measurements of efficacy, we
found that the relatively brief and tentative answers given by the CAM practitioners to the
efficacy questions were overshadowed by what we had intended to be preliminary questions
aimed at eliciting the etiological background to their notions of efficacy.3 For the most part,
the practitioners offered well-articulated, enthusiastic and detailed explanations of the
causes of breast cancer. This paper explores those explanations, arguing that they constitute
a principal component of the process of holistic sickening that necessarily underpins
holistic healing.
It is important to note at the outset that the discursive expansion of illness intrinsic to
the holism of holistic healing may be no less valid than conventional understandings of
breast cancer. To the contrary, holism may well be the most useful narrative for understanding
breast cancer individually and/or collectively. There are, however, hidden costs to the holistic
illness narrative, just as there are hidden costs to the conventional medical narrative. In the
case of holistic practice, these costs include constructing the patient in total as unwell
(rather than as essentially well with one diseased organ), holding the patient accountable
for being unwell or for failure to be healed, and an absence of clear determinants for the
end of treatment after all, who among us is ever really completely healthy? 4
Illness narratives
Freidson (1970) notes that, When a physician diagnoses a humans condition as an illness,
[s/he] changes the [persons] behavior by diagnosis: a social state is added to a biophysiological
state by assigning the meaning of illness to disease (1970: 223, see also Young 1981, Conrad
2001). Freidsons observation applies to CAM practitioners as well, since whenever
healers (of any sort) offer a diagnosis, they are constructing a social status and identity
drawn from a variety of culturally recognisable narratives. While medical discourse and
its constructive effects have been described thoroughly by scholars such as Emily Martin
(1989) regarding conventional biomedicine, little attention has been given to parallel processes
in the world of CAM.
Building upon sociological understandings of the constructive power of discourse, we
distinguish among three (interdependent) types of illness narratives, all of which come into
play when women diagnosed with breast cancer are treated by CAM practitioners.
Personal illness narratives, as described by Bury (2001), Williams (1984), and Kleinman
(1988), consist of the autobiographical stories through which individuals make sense of
2008 The Authors
Journal compilation 2008 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness/Blackwell Publishing Ltd
618 Susan Sered and Amy Agigian
their particular illness experiences the ruptures in their lives, their suffering, their fears
as ways of re-weaving coherent autobiographies. Inattention on the part of biomedical
professionals to personal illness narratives may be a reason for women diagnosed with
breast cancer to seek out CAM (Sered and Tabory 1999). CAM practitioners may be
more likely to give credence to these personal narratives.
Collective and public illness narratives comprise media portrayals, government statements,
proclamations and directives, public debates over funding and treatment, the speech-acts
of illness-specific advocacy organisations, advertisements by pharmaceutical and medical
supply companies, health education materials, and self-help and holistic healing literature.
Public breast cancer narratives have been transformed since the early 1990s into a hetero-
geneous discourse comprising streams that sometimes are in accord, and sometimes at odds
with each other (Kolker 2004). The culture of pink ribbons (and pink ribbon merchandising),
of walking, running, and racing for the cure, coexist alongside critical narratives linking
breast cancer to corporate malfeasance and the need for universal healthcare, as well as
a large popular literature urging women to eat green, write (alone or in groups), pray,
meditate, mountain climb, take vitamin supplements, hormone supplements, and love
themselves in order to avoid or survive breast cancer (Klawiter 1999, Love 1991).
Practitioner or healer narratives which comprise the core of this paper mediate
between personal and collective illness narratives. Freidsons (1970) work suggests that
practitioner narratives have particular clout because of the inherently unequal power
relationship between the expert healer conventional or CAM and the lay (and sick)
patient. In the case of CAM practitioners, that clout may be cultivated via an explicitly
articulated mission to educate and encourage their patients to make extensive lifestyle
and attitude changes, and may be positively reinforced via protracted bodily treatments
(massage, reflexology, etc.) that lead to feelings of relaxation or wellbeing.
Complementary and alternative medicine
The healing modalities commonly designated as CAM represent a wide range of epistemo-
logies and practices that are not easily categorised. CAM therapies range from one-time
treatments to courses of therapy and remediation that continue for years. CAM therapists
may hold medical degrees and charge hundreds or thousands of dollars for their services,
they may enrol in a variety of short-term courses, or they may be local folk healers who
offer their services for modest fees. Some practitioners work in the CAM department of a
hospital or in conjunction with conventional medical practices, some work in clinical-looking
offices, and some in New Age-looking offices.
There is much overlap among practices described variously by the terms alternative
medicine, natural medicine, complementary medicine, healing, holistic healing, non-conventional
medicine, integrative medicine, and for some, quackery; one list of CAM therapies, practices,
and systems is 10 pages long and ranges from Acupressure to Zero Balancing (Institute
of Medicine 2005: 28392). While some CAM practitioners see their work as complementary
to conventional medicine, others see their work as a true alternative to be used in place of
conventional therapies. Some practices, particularly those grouped under stress reduction
and wellness, have moved from being considered alternative to being considered com-
plementary, and have been integrated into mainstream care; for example, taught in nursing
and medical schools or offered in hospitals (Tovey, Easthope and Adams 2004, Baer 2004,
Ruggie 2004). Definitional quandaries are exacerbated by the fact that these boundaries
shift unevenly over time and across different locations.
2008 The Authors
Still, definitions of CAM (by whatever name) are frequently attempted. The NIHs
Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (2005) identified five types of CAM
therapies: alternative medical systems such as Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine
that have evolved over time as complete systems of theory and practice; mind-body
interventions such as meditation which are used to enhance the minds ability to affect the
healing of the body; biologically-based therapies such as herbs, foods, and nutritional
supplements; manipulative and body-based methods such as chiropractic manipulation and
massage; and energy therapies such as Reiki. While these categories are neither absolute
nor of proven heuristic value, they do offer some sense of the breadth of CAM approaches
found in the United States today.
In one of the few studies that has addressed why clients chose particular CAM modalities,
only one quarter of respondents chose a particular alternative therapy because they
believed in it and its principles. An approximately equal number chose CAM because of
desperation and the largest number chose CAM because of referrals, primarily from
friends, family members, acquaintances, and so on (Kelner and Wellman 1997, see also
OConnor 2002). Significantly, Shumay et al. (2001) found that cancer patients who used
CAM instead of conventional treatment tended to use three or more types of CAM.
The use of multiple CAM modalities is consonant with the more subjective epistemologies
that characterise CAM. CAM practitioners ways of knowing include making use of
intuition, connection-making, energy-sensing, and tapping the unique sensibilities of both
the practitioner and the patient. These are in contradistinction to the objective, universal,
quantifiable knowledge-making of biomedicine (Hufford 2002). As we show throughout
this paper, these relatively subjective and open-ended ways of knowing have important
implications for articulations of etiologies and efficacy (see Hirschkorn 2006 on knowledge
and legitimacy claims in conventional medicine and CAM).
While various CAM modalities and individual practitioners within those modalities
posit diverse belief and treatment systems, holism permeates the CAM landscape. Holism,
the notion that the body and mind are inexorably connected and that mental states can
contribute to or cause illness and healing, means that CAM healing addresses wider issues
rather than merely ameliorating particular symptoms. CAM modalities tend to assign
significant responsibility to the individual for her or his own health and illness. . . . In
CAM, health is typically understood as not merely the absence of symptoms but, more
positively, as a goal to be reached, gained only by effort (Goldstein 2002: 478). As
McClean (2005) argues, this assigning of personal responsibility is a two-edged sword: It
tends towards blaming the victim yet it also redresses the eschewal of individuality and
subjectivity (depersonalization) in biomedicine (2005: 630).5
Methodology6
In our original study design we aimed to interview five practitioners of each of 10 major
CAM modalities. However, the interview team quickly learned that most practitioners
utilise several CAM modalities, and that the modality listed on a practitioners business
card or web site may not be the only one practised. For example, respondents included a
Rolfer-Craniosacral Therapist, an Energy Medicine Healer-Social Worker, and a Yoga-
Danskinetics practitioner. Many used some form of spiritual energy healing and suggested
various vitamins or other dietary supplements, in addition to their primary CAM
modalities. This finding has important implications both for those seeking CAM treatment
and for future research, as differences among CAM modalities are not necessarily accurate
2008 The Authors
predictors of either the treatment that will be offered or the practitioners expectations of
the client.
Noting these complexities, all the participants in our study met the following criteria:
a self-definition as a healer who does not practise conventional, bio-medicine; a claim
to treat substantial numbers of breast cancer patients (this claim could not be measured
objectively because few of the practitioners kept systematic records); a formal healing
practice carried out in a clinic or office; and agreement to be interviewed as a CAM
practitioner for this study.
Included in the study were practitioners of at least 70 modalities, including acupuncture,
aura cleansing, ear coning, homeopathy, hypnotherapy, polarity therapy, visualisation and
yoga. The majority of practitioners interviewed seem to cluster in what could be considered
the more marginal end of the CAM spectrum (as opposed to more mainstream modalities
such as acupuncture), though all five of the NIH categories were represented. This leaning
was not intentional; in fact, a number of practitioners whom we set out to interview because
we had heard of them through mainstream modality channels turned out to have shifted the
focus of their practice to more holistic or marginal practices.7 Very few of the practitioners
work in a single modality historically rooted in their own ethnic or cultural community.
We located the practitioners interviewed for this study in a variety of ways. The research
team used personal contacts and an advertisement placed in a local Massachusetts breast
cancer advocacy organisation newsletter to identify breast cancer patients who had utilised
CAM. These women recommended their CAM practitioners for this study. We were also
referred by CAM practitioners who do not treat breast cancer patients to colleagues of
theirs who do, and by CAM practitioners who do treat breast cancer patients and knew of
others who take similar or different approaches to these patients. We also consulted hospital
websites that recommend or organise access to CAM practitioners through their own
integrative medicine centres. We located other practitioners through web or newsletter
listings of local CAM organisations, CAM conferences and workshops, bulletin boards in
CAM schools (such as the New England School of Acupuncture) and local health food
stores, and through the on-going research of the Religion, Health and Healing Initiative at
Harvard Universitys Center for the Study of World Religions (Sered 2004). While this
toolbox method (Doniger 1980) of selecting interviewees does not allow us to distinguish
between or among practitioners of various modalities, the breadth of our search meant that
we did not limit our interviews to a particular community or sub-set of practitioners.
Most interviews lasted an hour or more, and were conducted in the practitioners office.
A semi-structured questionnaire was used, covering questions ranging from how the
practitioner began her or his work, to specific questions about the causes of breast cancer,
breast cancer treatment, and how the practitioner defined and assessed efficacy.8 Interviewers
were graduate students and post-doctoral students at the Harvard Divinity School. Most
of the practitioners seemed to be white and middle-class, as did most of the interviewers.9
We attribute the willingness to participate in the study among practitioners whom we
contacted to several factors: their strong belief in their own work, the high status of
Harvard in the greater Boston area, and the practitioners interest in seeking affirmation
of the legitimacy of their work.
Interviewers recorded notes by hand during the interviews and entered them into a
computer database within 24 hours of the interview. Two readers independently coded the
transcripts for key and sub-themes in the interviews. These themes were drawn on a map
delineating both the range of themes and the relationships among themes, together with
specific statements that illustrate the themes (cf. Ryan and Bernard 2000 on classical
content analysis).
2008 The Authors
This study focused exclusively upon practitioners self-reporting of their beliefs and how
they presented their beliefs to their clients. The observations presented here elucidate
neither what the practitioners actually say in specific therapeutic contexts nor what their
women clients hear in those contexts.
Etiologies
Energy can be trapped. A tumour is trapped energy which has to do with emotions
and environment MM, a cancer survivor who directs a holistic movement center and
teaches classes combining Christian spirituality with yoga.
Etiologies are narrative endeavours in that they explain how and/or why illness has occurred.
Scholars of religion distinguish moral etiologies as an etiological subset in which
physical affliction or disease (such as AIDS) is judged to be a divine punishment for sinful
behaviour (Berner n.d.). From a sociological perspective, the notion of moral etiologies
could be expanded to include many etiological narratives: the recognition of certain con-
ditions in certain people at certain times as constituting illness (rather than constituting,
say, crime or normal life events), the legitimising of those conditions/people/times through
diagnosis, and allocating resources to treatment constitute a moral statement regarding who
or what counts in a particular social context. Etiologies often are contested domains not only
between patient and practitioner but also between and among various types of practitioner.
Most of the CAM practitioners spoke at length and in specific terms regarding what they
perceived as the causes of breast cancer. The most frequently cited etiological framework
pointed, in one form or another, to contemporary environment and lifestyles that were
unhealthy and generated multiple traumas and other attacks against health and wellbeing.
According to this narrative, these attacks upset energy balance, cause stress, and com-
promise immune systems. Stress and energy imbalances provoke or exacerbate psychological
problems and negative thinking which further harms the immune system, upsets ones
energy balance, and/or causes stress, all of which makes individuals more prone to ill
health. Although not articulated in this explicitly sequential manner by more than a very
few practitioners, the etiological discourses typically encompassed some sort of under-
standing that there were root causes (such as environmental degradation, character flaws,
spiritual unrest, etc.) that led to proximate causes (energy imbalances, immune system
deficiencies) that manifested as breast cancer.
Environmental degradation, toxic food, and genetic considerations

Almost all the CAM providers identify at least some aspect of todays unwholesome
lifestyle as a major culprit that promotes high rates of breast cancer. Most discussions of
lifestyle causes of breast cancer did not focus on a single factor, but rather on the multiple
insults our bodies, minds, and spirits sustain on a daily basis.
Environmental contaminants (such as antennae, microwaves, pesticides) often framed
conjointly with spiritual problems, were cited by many practitioners. For example, DI, an
acupuncturist, herbalist and colour therapist who treats cancer patients at a hospital and
in private practice, believes that the earth has more pathogenic factors now than it did 50
years ago, and that the energy that people get from the earth is not as pure as it used to be.
Most of the providers explicitly stated that eating bad food contributed to breast cancer.
As with other environmental factors, few providers identified a single type of food as
carcinogenic, instead citing a wide range of foods and types of food processing (ranging
2008 The Authors
from chronic dehydration to preservatives) as cancer-causing. SU, an integrative healing

coach says that nowadays we eat more sugar, processed food, partially hydrogenated and
rancid fats, there is not enough vitality and vitamin content in the food available at market,
and we dont consume enough fresh organic high quality vegetables and fish. We really have
gotten away from pure food and the body is working very hard to process a lot of foreign
objects, which were not meant to be ingested.
WK, a macrobiotic counsellor and travelling cook who lives with and cooks for cancer
patients all over the world, feels that modern people do not eat proper meals, and they eat
too much sugary food which causes hypoglycemia. LL, a practitioner with experience in
Ayurvedic medicine as well as yoga, therapeutic touch and nutritional counselling, believes
that the American diet with a lot of meat and dairy products might importantly con-
tribute to the incidence of breast cancer because meat and dairy products are full of
hormones, antibiotics, and some other potentially harmful substances.
While no practitioners saw genes as the sole factor determining why women got breast
cancer, eleven practitioners mentioned genetics as one of many factors contributing to
breast cancer. EJ, a psychotherapist and Rolfer, has studied the use of Tibetan medicine
for depression and anxiety and works at a major medical school in the Boston area. EJ
was one of the few practitioners who downplayed the importance of environmental factors:
Women do not get breast cancer if they are not genetically predisposed to get it, even if
they are exposed to the same environmental factors as women who do get ill.
Stress, social alienation, and contemporary lifestyles

Most of the practitioners pointed to some aspect of modern life in terms of the root
etiology of breast cancer. DI, the acupuncturist/herbalist/colour therapist, believes that
the modern lifestyle overall weakens the Wei Qi (the bodys force field). People work too
much, they dont eat well, and they communicate over email rather than in person. With a
weakened Wei Qi, the person is more vulnerable to illness and trauma.
NB, a pastoral counsellor and shamanic healer, emphasises the social disconnect
experienced by many in modern society, explaining that One reason cancer occurs is from
disconnection with self and community, so my approach is about healing those con-
nections. JJ, a social worker and hypnotherapist who does hands-on healing, body
dialogue, and past life regression, among other modalities points to the problem of our
lost connection with the natural world and Mother Earth.
For many of the practitioners, the etiological path from our contemporary lifestyle
to breast cancer has much to do with stress. BJ, a practitioner of Native American-derived
Earth Medicine, is concerned that Women worry too much, they are stressed and are full
of fear of death, taxes, disease, neighbours, and so on. GE, who manages a natural
products store where she provides information about nutritional supplements, says I think
that stress plays a major role. Two-income families, and raising active children while
maintaining ones own active life, cause the body to be in a constant fight and flight state.
People are always charged. People do not sleep enough or take time for themselves. People
dont really stop to take a minute and recoup. People are exhausted.
Trauma
Many of the practitioners identify trauma of some sort, whether psychological, physical,
communal or individual, as a cause of breast cancer. For example, NM, an Episcopal lay
healer who is a combat veteran and former instructor in the US Marines, approvingly
quotes oncologist Carl Simonton, who, according to NM, says that 85 per cent of people
have a trauma a year to 18 months before the onset of breast cancer.
2008 The Authors
CMM, an intuitive space designer who creates healing, nurturing, empowering and
sacred spaces for women with breast cancer, believes that breast cancer is about the disease
of a closed heart. When the heart is hurt it must be healed. If it doesnt heal then the energy
flow can become blocked. The more women can do to release the pain that binds them, the
more energy they can get flowing again. She further explicates her focus on architectural
treatment: Energy blockages inside the house and the persons body stop chi life force from
flowing.
Some of the practitioners are quite specific regarding trauma. JS, a body-mind-spirit
therapist with a PhD in biochemistry says, It is characteristic that prior to their diagnosis
of cancer, they experience at least three strong emotional traumas, and have a death wish.
RM, a psychic consultant, spirit medium and regression therapist, believes that traumatic
events do not directly cause cancer. Instead, traumas cause a person to adopt negative
beliefs. If women experience trauma, issues of extreme fear, anger etc., then their chakras
close and they can get ill.
Character defects, negative thoughts, and spiritual stagnation

According to many CAM practitioners, mind, body, and spirit must all work together to
create health; if one aspect of ones life is unwell, the rest will suffer. Characteralogical and
psychological defects, as hinted at in RMs comments, become causes of breast cancer.
Some of these defects are described in ways that are neutral or only mildly negative, and
not particularly the patients fault. Thus, SS, a psychoimmunologist, teacher, and spiritual
healer with a background in business, clarifies that breast cancer patients both female
and male are usually nice, altruistic people who self-deny themselves. They are good at
their own expense. These patients need to raise their self-esteem and self-acceptance.
Other character and psychological defects are described in more critical terms. JF, a
psychotherapist and energy healer specialising in breast cancer says that, Illness can be a
way to hold a loyalty to the past. A kind of blind love. DL, the herbalist/yoga instructor/
health food store manager says, Most breast cancer people seem to expect a lot of
sympathy. Several practitioners stated explicitly that they believed some or all breast
cancer patients had a death wish. RF, a holistic chiropractor states Some people want to
check out and die.
Because mind, body, and spirit are interconnected in the holistic worldview, ones thoughts
have a large impact on ones health and illness. GC, a counselling psychologist and Christian
minister, who is herself a survivor of breast cancer, runs groups for breast cancer patients
and teaches that dwelling on cancer is a toxic thought that can further exacerbate the illness.
Similarly, RF, the holistic chiropractor, believes that people who develop cancer may have
a disease-forming belief system. Likewise, RM, the psychic consultant, spirit medium and
regression therapist, holds that beliefs in general create our personal and collective realities.
Thus, breast and other cancers can be caused by subconscious negative beliefs.
An important sub-set of character-related etiological explanations invokes a language of
spirituality. RF, a holistic chiropractor, expressed a common refrain when he said Some
people need cancer in order to open up to spirituality. Similarly, according to CMM, the
intuitive space designer, A woman who has cancer has a life lesson to learn. And, as JW,
a Radiance Therapist whose healing modality involves identifying and removing archetypes
and patterns according to which people live, notes Women come to see me because they
believe there is a deeper reason for their disease than just its physical aspect, and they
would like to get insight into that.
Attributing illness to spiritual deficiencies is one of the more controversial etiological
premises in the world of CAM. Thus, DE, a practitioner of Kiiko (a Japanese form of
2008 The Authors
acupuncture), finds that he has to deal with a lot of people who are angry at God about
what has happened to them. In such cases he points out to them that Illness is a natural
occurrence; God has nothing to do with it.
Gendered etiologies
The etiological frameworks laid out above were discussed in terms of womens specific
experiences by many of the CAM providers. In a number of instances, our interviewees
psychologised the causes of breast cancer in ways that required gender-related psychological
transformation in order for healing to occur. These providers particularly emphasised
womens tendency to be overly nurturing to others, while neglecting their own needs to be
nurtured. They are too good for their own good, says WK, the macrobiotic counsellor.
Further, they overnourish other people at their own expense. They are too sweet and
they also tend to eat too many sweet foods such as candies, chocolate and cakes. Similarly,
according to MB, a chakra-based energy healer who channels divine love, Women with
breast cancer are often nurturing of other people. Like they say on the airplanes, you have
to put the oxygen mask on yourself before you help other people.
JF, the psychotherapist/energy healer, maintains that cancer is a symbol for a
connection and breast cancer is a womans deep longing for her mother. RM, the psychic
consultant/spirit medium/regression therapist, asserts that we have a contemporary culture
of feelings which makes women try to express their feelings too much. Women constantly
give love, but do not get it themselves, or do not know how to receive it.
For some of the practitioners, the psychological explanations were framed in feminist
terms. According to JJ, the social worker/hypnotherapist/hands-on healer/past life regres-
sion therapist, women want to be recognised and cherished, like everybody else. They want
to be heard. Instead, they are shut down and not able to speak for themselves.
Several providers linked the rise in incidence of breast cancer to the unsettling effects of
rapidly changing gender roles. A few providers views drew on discourses of nostalgia for
patriarchal power and for conservative social arrangements, interpreting breast cancer as a
symptom of changing gender roles and relations. JJ attributes the breast cancer epidemic
to the fact that nowadays women are asked to perform like men and work at mens
positions, such as in the corporate world.
JF thinks there is more breast cancer now because women have to shut down the heart
chakra in order to be super-women, having full-time careers in addition to raising children
and taking care of the home . . . There was a time that being a mother and nurturing and
raising children was the best possible way to be; now economically its not good enough.
MM, a cancer survivor who directs a holistic movement centre and teaches classes com-
bining Christian spirituality with yoga, explains that As the womens movement brought
so much opportunity for women, it also brought women into an arena dominated by men
and we are simply wired differently. If women are not able to voice their truth or express
their hearts, there is a build up AMA (yoga term for good) in the body that needs to find
a way out. . . . According to Kundalini Yoga, women are 11 times more powerful, 11 times
more wise and 11 times more sensitive than men. Disease is complex, but, many times,
there is an emotional/spiritual component. Because of that yogic belief, if women are not
given the opportunity to show their true stuff there is a real stifling of energy. Our bodies
are just energy forming into matter. Tumours are energy too (suppressed energy unable to
find a voice on some level) . . . Women need connection and support. Fifty years ago,
womens roles were different, but I wonder if perhaps they had more connection, more
community, more support amongst each other. I am feeling like we are still needing that
community of support but our lives are about 100 times busier.
2008 The Authors
Many of the practitioners discussed gender issues as causes of breast cancer in terms of
the contemporary environmental and lifestyle pathogens that particularly affect women.
MM, the holistic movement centre director, notes that computers send out electromagnetic
rays, which typically are parallel to the level of a womans breast. BD, a reflexologist and
intuitive healer, believes that nodes often get congested with antiperspirants and especially
underwire bras block the blood flow in the breast area, an opinion shared by several other
interviewees. Gendered sartorial factors mentioned by the practitioners include constricting
clothing (tight jeans, bras), deodorant, antiperspirant, high heels, mammograms, shaving
ones underarms, and underwire bras.
Efficacy
Notions and measures of efficacy, like etiologies, are constructs in which a variety of actors
have more or less power to shape narratives in which certain outcomes are labelled as
successes, a variety of experts have the power to judge success, and a variety of methods
are used in those assessments. As Etkin (1988) argues:
Differences in medical ideologies notwithstanding, all human societies share a general

understanding of medical efficacy as some combination of symptom reduction and other
physical and behavioral transformations that indicate restoration of health. But this
generalization obscures a wealth of meanings and expectations that are encoded within
the complex patterns of medical behaviors that characterize different medical systems
(1988: 300).
Any measurement of efficacy rests on assumptions regarding the goals of treatment.

Jackson and Scambler (2007) point out that current dominant discourses of biomedical
effectiveness as evidence based are rather recent and mask a number of internal contradictions.
Unequivocally, scientifically-proven, statistically compelling evidence exists for only a
minority of conventional treatments, funding bias affects what treatments are studied at all,
and patient concerns often override so-called best practices.
Our respondents talked about their understandings of treatment goals, what it means to
be healed, and how one recognises that healing has taken place, with notably less specificity
and ardour than they talked about breast cancer etiologies. While their definitions of
healing are consistent with the range of etiologies they offered, the elaborations are
strikingly thinner. For example TM, who uses a combination of healing prayer, healing
touch, Reiki and guided visualisation, replied to the question of how he defines healing: I
dont know. I really dont know. I have no expectation and dont know the outcome. I just
offer them the experience. Other notions of healing included, for example, being at peace
and harmony within oneself, with ones significant others, and with the divine; improved
immune function; increased energy; reduced stress; enhanced spirituality.
CAM practitioners were not the healthcare providers who made the breast cancer
diagnosis. Conventional medical practitioners in a very different discursive universe made
that diagnosis. Rather, the CAM providers have re-diagnosed the patient with problems not
identified by the oncologist. Thus, (holistic) healing will be measured in relation to the
CAM practitioners diagnosis, and only sometimes in relation to breast cancer per se. A
successful outcome by conventional medical standards whether by non-recurrence of
tumours over a five-year period, by clean blood work, or by another measure does not
necessarily indicate a successful outcome to the CAM provider.
2008 The Authors
Questions of how they assess or measure healing elicited few specific responses from
practitioners other than the acupuncturists (who measure effectiveness of their treatments
through checking the pulse, tongue and palpitations at acupuncture points). Several
practitioners explained that they assess outcomes by looking at a patients posture, alignment
or face. SH, a music therapist, uses subjective measures such as seeing patients smile,
breathe more deeply and say thank you. For EC, a psychotherapist and nutritional
counsellor, It is very informal. I just ask them to keep me posted on how they are doing.
RFr, a massage therapist, cant promise a reduction in symptoms or in the progress of
cancer. I leave all measures of success to the patient. MB, the chakra-based energy healer,
was most clear about this: I am not concerned with parameters.
For the most part the practitioners described efficacy as of marginal relevance to their
work. None of our interviewees kept track of success rates or used any sort of systematic
means of assessing their own work. This finding lends strength to Kleinman and Seemans
(1998) argument regarding the need to analyse the directionality of efficacy, to ask efficacy
for whom? (1998: 246). The vast majority of our interviewees were enthusiastic about the
modalities they practised and the meaningfulness of their work and many of them had chosen
their CAM careers after leaving some other profession that they had felt less satisfying.
From their own perspectives, their work is highly efficacious. However, few of them offered
conceptual or pragmatic frameworks for assessing efficacy in terms of their patients
experiences or outcomes. This absence of specificity means that the end point of holistic healing
from breast cancer is murky, making it difficult to know if or when healing has occurred.
Assessing efficacy is complicated by the eclectic assortment of treatment modalities most of
the practitioners interviewed in this study use. Many of the respondents select treatment options
from what Sered (2007) has called a menu of recognised practices. The multiple modalities
that the practitioners use are, of course, congruent with holistic sickening: Because holistic
sickening is so all encompassing, then remedies also need to be broad and eclectic. What goes
on, then, is a kind of bricolage that is possible because these practitioners, for the most part, are
only loosely grounded in a culturally specific healing tradition. While one is unlikely to find a
Chinese acupuncturist using Reiki or crystals to heal a patient, most (not all) of the practitioners
interviewed in this study felt very free to borrow and appropriate healing practices. This
freedom, then, further problematises the conceptualisation and tracking of efficacy.
The CAM practitioners tended to eschew any form of efficacy discourse: For the most part,
they did not identify treatment goals, measure success, or keep records of success and failures
in treatment (see Kemper n.d. on the difficulties in operationalising outcome measures for
CAM researchers). Still, and we stress this point, the absence of attention to efficacy is not
malicious. Rather, because the practitioners see their treatments as individualised for each
patient there is no system readily available to them for evaluating the overall efficacy of their
treatment regimes. As Barnes (2005) has suggested, the discourse of efficacy among non-
conventional healers is often constrained because their expectations regarding outcomes tend
to be individualised for each patient. By contrast, the medically dominant practice of articulating,
evaluating and discussing efficacy rests on the generalisability of results. This point is crucial
because, as the literature regarding why women turn to CAM shows (see above), emphasis on
the individuality of each patient and the attendant individual consideration and attentiveness
are central to the appeal of CAM. Unlike conventional medicine that measures cancer in terms
of types of cells (a unit that lends itself to study via the scientific method: replicability,
generalisability), CAM practitioners relate to individuals who, among other aspects to their
uniqueness, struggle with symptoms of cancer. As McClean (2005) noted in his study of
crystal and spiritual healing in Northern England, the if it works for you approach to
efficacy serves to enhance a sense of agency and control among CAM clients (2005: 630).
2008 The Authors
Holistic sickening
Practitioners discursive construction of breast cancer transforms it from a discrete physical

disease of the breast to a much larger problem potentially involving all areas of a womans
life (and possibly her past lives). This re-framing is what we call holistic sickening; that is,
a discursive process through which a discrete corporeal diagnosis (cancer cells clustered in
the breast) is widened into a broad assessment of trauma, misfortune, character defects,
stunted spirituality, bad food choices, gender trouble, and a degraded environment.
In the practitioners illness narratives, breast cancer is construed as a personally
meaningful event as well as an opportunity to learn, grow, and heal on a number of levels
on which the patient might not have known she needed healing. The oncologist may be
able to bring ones cancer into remission, but CAM can make you better than new. If
cancer is the ultimate imperfection, CAM transforms it into something that makes one
more perfect through therapeutic processes that emphasise self-awareness, spiritual growth,
lifestyle upgrades, and positive outlooks. Given the immense popularity of CAM, it is
reasonable to surmise that this transformation is experienced positively by many patients,
particularly in situations in which there is congruence between the worldviews of the
practitioner and the client.
At the same time, this penchant for construing breast cancer as an individual challenge
with the potential to make one into an overall better and healthier person has inflamed
feminist social commentator Barbara Ehrenreich (2001): For me at least, breast cancer will
never be a source of identity or pride. . . . This is the one great truth that I bring out of the
breast cancer experience, which did not . . . make me prettier or stronger, more feminine or
spiritual only more deeply angry (2001: 53).10 Ehrenreichs reflections would not sit
comfortably with the narratives offered by the practitioners in this study, for many of
whom rage too is interpreted as a cause of disease. As Ehrenreich understands well, illness
narratives have constructive as well as descriptive power. Thus, the mandate toward a good
attitude has the potential not only to stifle important negative feelings and thoughts that
women need to process when faced with a life-changing and life-threatening illness, but also
to curtail the possibility of collective action against external entities (corporations, government)
whose policies may well contribute to rising breast cancer rates.11
A thread that runs throughout many of the illness narratives heard in this study is that
the breast cancer patient herself somehow directly or indirectly, partially or in full created
her own cancer (cf. Lupton 1994).12 Emphasis on the individual womans culpability for her
own illness (and potential death) is not, of course, limited to CAM practitioners; con-
ventional US medicine also touts individual responsibility if not blame for illness,
framing smoking and obesity (and even being uninsured) as personal choices that cause
many, if not most, diseases (see Blaxter 1997, Sered and Fernandopulle 2005). Con-
ventional medicine and CAM co-exist in the same contemporary US context tapping
into the same collective illness narrative that draws heavily on western discourses about
the perfectibility of the body.
Scholars have written much about the longstanding history in American medical
discourse of assigning individual responsibility to people who are sick, and of faulting
them for not doing everything possible to be healthy (see, for example, Gevitz 1988). Both
CAM and contemporary conventional medicine place enormous emphasis upon the
individuals responsibility for illness and little emphasis upon social-structural and environ-
mental factors that lead to good or poor health (Simpson 2000). In fact, by holistically
extending the notion of good health to encompass spiritual, relational and emotional factors
2008 The Authors
in addition to physical ones, CAM practitioners can be seen as extending medicalisation

even further than conventional practitioners do (Scott 1999). Thus, for example, while the
biomedical discourse vis--vis breast cancer and food generally is limited to avoiding
certain kinds of fats and attaining and maintaining a lean weight, most of our interviewees
offered diverse and extensive food-based etiologies and treatment plans (cf. Salkeld 2005).
The issue of food deserves closer attention in light of contemporary US cultures
gendered concerns with weight, appearance and diet (Millman 1980). CAM practitioners
draw on public, collective narratives of self-regulation and health behaviour being required
for successful femininity.13 Among the CAM practitioners, the expectation that women will
modify and control their diets is nearly universal (this is also the case for practitioners
whose primary modality is not nutrition focused). More broadly, for most of the practitioners
holistic sickening is presented as highly gendered process. For some, breast cancer is on the
rise because women are too feminine, for others breast cancer is on the rise because women
are too masculine. Being too emotional and/or repressing ones emotions, being too nurturing
or not nurturing enough, working at a computer or wearing an underwire bra all may cause
cancer. This glut of etiological elaborations has the effect of overdetermining gender as a
cause of illness.
Discrepancies between the forcefulness of causal attribution and the timidity regarding
therapeutic promise construct an on-going state of holistic sickness for women, justifying
expansively bricolaged interventions and, simultaneously, recognising the futility of such
interventions to definitively heal. While coding the interviews, we couldnt help noting that
if a breast cancer patient had to resolve her issues with self-esteem, anger, nurturing,
work-family balance, and her relationship with her mother, not to mention transforming
her negative or toxic thoughts into positive energy, meditating, doing special exercises,
overhauling her diet and rearranging her furniture while navigating a positive female
gender role in a society in which gender roles are rapidly changing, she easily could die of
old age before becoming well.
As we have argued in this paper, holistic sickening is a necessary precursor that gives
holistic healing its meaning. The particular paradox of holistic healing is that the very
holism of its etiological narratives means that corresponding narratives of efficacy tend to
be vague and open ended, leaving patients (perhaps) in a chronically holistically sickened
state. It is crucial to understand, however, that the argument we have made here is not
limited to CAM. Rather, for any kind of healing to take place some sort of (discursive)
sickening must occur healing can only happen if sickness is recognised, identified,
legitimised and eliminated or overcome in some fashion. From a sociological perspective,
much of the power of practitioners CAM and conventional lies in how compellingly
they are able to answer questions of who is sick and why, when or if healing has occurred
and why, and what it means to be sick or healed or, if healing is even possible.
Address for correspondence: Susan Sered, Department of Sociology, Suffolk University, Boston,
Massachusetts, USA
e-mail: susan@sered.name
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank Linda L. Barnes, Barbara Potrata and the interviewing team, Lynn Davidman,
Stefan Timmermans, Anne Pollock, Annette Amelia Oliveira, and Lawrence Sullivan. Funding for
this study was provided by Harvard Universitys Center for the Study of World Religions.
2008 The Authors
Notes
1 This paper focuses on US practitioners and cultural context. While further research is needed to
assess the relevance of our findings to situations in other countries, work by McClean (2005),
Jackson and Scambler (2007), Saks (2000), and Sharma (2000) does suggest that some parallels
may be found among UK practitioners.
2 Some CAM practitioners offer some free treatments to clients who cannot pay. The typical cost
of CAM runs from $50.00 to $150.00 per treatment, with a course of 10 treatments being a
common initial arrangement. See Goldstein (2002) on the commodification of CAM.
3 The initial goal of the study was to develop web-based materials to assist breast cancer patients
to select CAM modalities that best suit their needs and values.
4 The idea that breast cancer needs to be managed over the long run rather than completely cured
is not unique to CAM practitioners. Conventional medical practitioners, at least in recent years,
also refrain from the discourse of curing in reference to breast cancer, speaking instead of
bringing cancer into remission (cf. Frank 1995 on The Remission Society).
5 Depersonalisation is often the aspect of conventional medicine that breast cancer patients find
most distressing. In Sered and Tabory (1999) women treated for breast cancer complained of
physicians who never learned their names and hospital staff that referred to them as the breast
cancer in room 314, while they praised medical staff who recognised them as complete human
beings with families, hobbies, careers, fears, and idiosyncrasies.
6 Approval for this study was granted by Harvard Universitys Committee on the Use of Human
Subjects. All interviewees signed consent forms.
7 We define mainstream CAM practices as those that have gained some recognition in the
biomedical world and that have more formal courses of study for practitioners (e.g. acupuncture).
8 Copies of the questionnaire are provided upon request.
9 Questions about racial and class-based self-identifications were not included in the study.
10 Ehrenreich continues What sustained me through the treatments is a purifying rage, a resolve,
framed in the sleepless nights of chemotherapy, to see the last polluter, along with say, the last
smug health insurance operator, strangled with the last pink ribbon (2001: 53).
11 As Simonds (1992) observed regarding self-help literature aimed at women, The genre fails
them in that it encourages individually oriented and adaptive endeavors to achieve personal
change . . . while it also represses a definitive challenge to the ways in which the social construction
of gender works against women (1992: 48).
12 Explaining illness through past life experience (as JJ does) can create in some CAM users a
positive sense of not being to blame for their cancer, a sense that runs counter to many medical
and lay accounts.
13 cf. Foss and Sundby (2003) on the social construction of gendered patients in hospital settings.
References
American Cancer Society, www.cancer.org. Accessed 25 May 2007.

Baer, H. (2004) Towards an Integrative Medicine: from Holistic Health to Complementary and Alternative
Medicine. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press.
Barnes, L.L. (2005) American acupuncture and efficacy: meanings and their points of insertion,
Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 19, 3, 239 66.
Berner, L.G. (n.d.) From moral judgment to empathic support: the religious Jewish communitys
response to AIDS. Council of Religious AIDS Network. http://www.aidsfaith.com/convocation/
paper17.asp. Accessed 24 June 2007.
Bishop, F., Yardley, L. and Lewith, G. (2006) Why do people use different forms of complementary
medicine? Multivariate associations between treatment and illness beliefs and complementary
medicine, Psychology and Health, 21, 5, 683 98.
2008 The Authors
Blaxter, M. (1997) Whose fault is it? Peoples own conceptions of the reasons for health inequalities,
Social Science and Medicine, 44, 6, 747 56.
Boon, H., Olatunde, F. and Zick, S. (2007) Trends in complementary/alternative medicine use by
breast cancer survivors: comparing survey data from 1998 and 2005, BMC Womens Health, 7, 4.
Bury, M. (2001) Illness narratives: fact or fiction, Sociology of Health and Illness, 23, 3, 26385.
Conrad, P. (ed.) (2001) The Sociology of Health and Illness: Critical Perspectives. 6th Edition.
New York: Worth Publishers.
Ehrenreich, B. (2001) Cancerland. Harpers Magazine, November, 4353.
Eisenberg, D., Davis, R.B., Ettner, S.L., et al. (1998) Trends in alternative medicine use in the United
States, 1990 1997: results of a follow-up national survey, Journal of the American Medical Associa-
tion, 280, 18, 1569 75.
Etkin, N.L. (1988) Cultural constructions of efficacy. In van der Geest, S. and Whyte, S.R. (eds), The
Context of Medicines in Developing Countries. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic.
Foss, C. and Sundby, J. (2003) The construction of the gendered patient: hospital staffs attitudes to
female and male patients, Patient Education and Counseling, 49, 1, 4552.
Frank, A.W. (1995) The Wounded Storyteller: Body, illness, and Ethics. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Freidson, E. (1970) Profession of Medicine. New York: Dodd, Mead, In Conrad, P. (ed.) (2001) The
Sociology of Health and Illness: Critical Perspectives. 6th Edition. New York: Worth Publishers.
Gevitz, N. (ed.) (1988) Other Healers: Unorthodox Medicine in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press.
Goldstein, M.S. (2002) The emerging socioeconomic and political support for alternative medicine
in the United States, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 583, 4463.
Henderson, J.W. and Donatelle, R.J. (2004) Complementary and alternative medicine use by women
after completion of allopathic treatment for breast cancer, Alternative Therapies in Health and
Medicine, 10, 1, 52 57.
Hirschkorn, K.A. (2006) Exclusive versus everyday forms of professional knowledge: legitimacy
claims in conventional and alternative medicine, Sociology of Health and Illness, 28, 5, 53357.
Hufford, D.J. (2002) CAM and cultural diversity: ethics and epistemology converge. In Callahan, D.
(ed.) The Role of Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Accommodating Pluralism. Washington
DC: Georgetown University Press.
Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, Board on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention/
Committee on the Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine by the American Public (2005)
Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
Jackson, S. and Scambler, G. (2007) Perceptions of evidence-based medicine: traditional acupuncturists in
the UK and resistance to biomedical modes of evaluation. Sociology of Health and Illness, 29, 3, 41229.
Kelner, M. and Wellman, B. (1997) Who seeks alternative health care? A profile of the users of five
modes of treatment, Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 3, 2, 12740.
Kemper, K. (2002) Clinical outcomes in complementary and alternative medicine: the glass slipper
and the princess (unpublished manuscript).
Klawiter, M. (1999) Racing for the cure, walking women, and toxic touring: mapping cultures of
action within the Bay Area terrain of breast cancer, Social Problems, 46, 10426.
Kleinman, A. (1988) The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition. New York:
Basic Books.
Kleinman, A. and Seeman, D. (1998) The politics of moral practice in psychotherapy and religious
healing, Contributions to Indian Sociology (n.s.) 32, 2, 23752.
Kolker, E.S. (2004) Framing as a cultural resource in health social movements: funding activism and
the breast cancer movement in the US 1990 1993, Sociology of Health and Illness, 26, 6, 82044.
Love, S. (1991) Dr. Susan Loves Breast Book. Boston: Addison-Wesley.
Luker, K., Beaver, K. Leinster, S. and Glynn Owens, R. (1996) Meaning of illness for women with
breast cancer, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 23, 6, 1194201.
Lupton, D. (1994) Femininity, responsibility, and the technological imperative: discourses on breast
cancer in the Australian press, International Journal of Health Services, 24, 1, 7389.
2008 The Authors
Martin, E. (1989) The Woman in the Body: a Cultural Analysis of Reproduction. Boston: Beacon Press.
Maskarinec, G., Gotay, C.C., Tatsumura, Y., Shumay, D.M. and Kakai, H. (2001) Perceived cancer
causes: use of complementary and alternative therapy, Cancer Practice, 9, 4, 18390.
Mayo Clinic Staff. Breast Cancer 10 May 2005. <http://www.mayoclinic.com/invoke.cfm?id=DS00328>.
Accessed 26 July 2005.
McClean, S. (2005) The Illness is part of the person: discourses of blame, individual responsibility
and individuation at a centre for spiritual healing in the North of England, Sociology of Health
and Illness, 27, 5, 628 48.
Millman, M. (1980) Such a Pretty Face: Being Fat in America. New York: Norton.
National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (2005) Get the facts: what is complementary
and alternative medicine (CAM)? http://nccam.nih.gov/health/whatiscam/. Accessed 30 June 2005.
OConnor, B.B. (2002) Personal experience, popular epistemology, and complementary and alternative
medicine research. In Callahan, D. (ed.) The Role of Complementary and Alternative Medicine:
Accommodating Pluralism. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.
OFlaherty, W.D. (1980) Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Ruggie, M. (2004) Marginal to Mainstream: Alternative Medicine in America. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Ryan, G.W. and Bernard, H.R. (2000) Data management and analysis methods. In Denzin, N.K. and
Lincoln, Y.S. (eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research, 2nd Edition. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Saks, M. (2000) Professionalism, politics and CAM. In Kelner, M., Wellman, B., Pescosolido, B. and Saks,
M. (eds) Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Challenge and Change. Oxford: Taylor and Francis.
Salkeld, E. (2005) Holistic physicians clinical discourse on risk: an ethnographic study, Medical
Anthropology, 24, 325 47.
Scott, A.L. (1999) Paradoxes of holism: some problems in developing an anti-oppressive medical
practice, Health, 3, 2, 131 49.
Sered, S. (ed.) (2004) Religious Healing in Boston: Body, Spirit, Community. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University, Center for the Study of World Religions.
Sered, S. (2007) Taxonomies of ritual mixing: ritual healing in the contemporary United States,
History of Religions, 47, 2/3, 221 38.
Sered, S. and Tabory, E. (1999) You are a number, not a human being: Israeli breast cancer patients
experiences with the medical establishment, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 13, 3, 22352.
Sered, S. and Fernandopulle, R. (2005) Uninsured in America: Life and Death in the Land of Opportunity.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Sharma, U. (2000) Medical pluralism and the future of CAM. In Kelner, M., Wellman, B., Pescosolido,
B. and Saks, M. (eds) Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Challenge and Change. Oxford:
Taylor and Francis.
Shumay, D.M., Maskarinec G., Kakai H., and Gotay, C.C. (2001) Why some cancer patients choose
complementary and alternative medicine instead of conventional treatment, The Journal of Family
Practice, 50, 12, 1067.
Simonds, W. (1992) Women and Self-Help Culture. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Simpson, C. (2000) Controversies in breast cancer prevention: the discourse of risk. In Potts, L.K.
(ed.) Ideologies of Breast Cancer: Feminist Perspectives. New York: St. Martins Press.
Tovey, P., Easthope, G. and Adams, J. (eds) (2004) The Mainstreaming of Complementary and Alternative
Medicine: Studies in Social Context. London: Routledge.
Williams, G. (1984) The genesis of chronic illness: narrative reconstruction, Sociology of Health and
Illness, 6, 2, 175 200.
Wooddell, M.J. and Hess, D.J. (1998) Women Confront Cancer: Making Medical History by Choosing
Alternative and Complementary Therapies. NY: New York University Press.
Wyatt, G.K., Friedman, L.L., Given, C.W., Given, B.A. and Beckrow, K.C. (1999) Complementary
therapy use among older cancer patients, Cancer Practice, 7, 3, 13644.
Young, A. (1981) The creation of medical knowledge: some problems in interpretation, Social Science
and Medicine, Part B: Medical Anthropology, 15, 3, 37986.
2008 The Authors

Holistic Sickening Breast Cancer and The

Enviado por

Dados do documento

Direitos autorais

Formatos disponíveis

Compartilhar este documento

Compartilhar ou incorporar documento

Opções de compartilhamento

Você considera este documento útil?

Este conteúdo é inapropriado?

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Holistic Sickening Breast Cancer and The

Enviado por

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Sociology of Health & Illness Vol. 30 No. 4 2008 ISSN 01419889, pp.

Holistic sickening: breast cancer and the discursive worlds

Keywords: holistic healing, gender, breast cancer, etiology, alternative medicine

MW, traditional Chinese medicine practitioner

Complementary and alternative medicine

Environmental degradation, toxic food, and genetic considerations

from chronic dehydration to preservatives) as cancer-causing. SU, an integrative healing

Stress, social alienation, and contemporary lifestyles

Character defects, negative thoughts, and spiritual stagnation

Differences in medical ideologies notwithstanding, all human societies share a general

Any measurement of efficacy rests on assumptions regarding the goals of treatment.

Practitioners discursive construction of breast cancer transforms it from a discrete physical

in addition to physical ones, CAM practitioners can be seen as extending medicalisation

American Cancer Society, www.cancer.org. Accessed 25 May 2007.

Você também pode gostar