List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments
1 Middle-Class Use of Nonmedical Healing
2 Features of Groups Studied
3 Healing in Christian Groups
4 Traditional Metaphysical Movements
5 Eastern Meditation and Human Potential Groups
6 Psychic and Occult Healing
7 The Role of Healer
8 Help-Seeking, Beyond the Medical Model
9 Ritual, Symbolism, and Healing
10 Individualisms and Transformations of the Self
Appendix A
Interview Schedule
Index
MEREDITH B. MCGUIRE is professor of sociology at Trinity
University, San Antonio, Texas, and the author of Pentecostal
Catholics and other books.
DEBRA KANTOR is acting director of education and training for the
New Jersey Medical School National Tuberculosis Center.
"One of the more provocative studies of why middle America is
making increasing use of ritual healing and what that choice tells
us of problems with biomedical care in technological
institutions....A welcome addition to anthropological studies of
ritual healing in other societies, and it illuminates a huge
component of our health care system that is poorly understood."
*Harvard University*
"An all too rare volume, namely a scholarly work on the practice of
healing in suburban or what we might call middle-class America.
McGuire, perhaps uniquely, has set out the religious or 'ritual'
healing beliefs and practices that are usually strictly segregated
and kept apart...Anyone who takes seriously the need to understand
'healing'...should obtain this book."
*Health and Healing*
"The power of the book is in the larger cultural analysis it
offers...a valuable contribution to medical sociology."
*Sociological Analysis*
"The remarkable strength of this book about the exotic in the
commonplace is that it demonstrates both that ritual healing is
widespread in the heartland of medical technology, and that the
wide variety of ritual healing practices are based on similar
structures."
*Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry*
"Develops an innovative sociological approach to the study of
alternative healing practices through a methodologically sound
qualitative study....The high quality of research and
conceptualization and the meticulous documentation of the relevant
literature make [this book] essential reading for those interested
in the sociology and anthropology of religion and of medicine, and
in the study of health and illness in contemporary America."
*Contemporary Sociology*
"This welcome study of nonmedical healing among upper-middle-class
and middle-class persons in Essex County, New Jersey, clearly shows
how individuals become attracted to and influenced by alternative
healing techniques."
*Choice*
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