Toward a Medicine of the Imagination

This paper re-visits the medical history of the imagination and contemporary attitudes toward complementary and alternative medicine to consider a medicine of imagination, which is directly concerned with the interactions between imaginative constructions of the self, the psychophysiology of image and metaphor, and the politicsof healing practices.

Abstract

This paper re-visits the medical history of the imagination and contemporary attitudes toward complementary and alternative medicine to consider three uses of the imagination: (1) imaginary medicine, in which wishful thinking, colorful metaphors and inflated expectations lead people to pursue forms of healing with little rational support; (2) imagination as medicine, in which the creative capacities to construct new images work to reshape and reposition the self; and (3) a medicine of imagination, which is directly concerned with the interactions between imaginative constructions of the self, the psychophysiology of image and metaphor, and the politicsof healing practices.