Only Outlaws Will Practice Zen

                      by George A. Rhoads, PhD

     That is what a poster says at The American Institute of Martial Arts where I teach a workshop on subtle energy healing (Qi Gong). The slogan refers to the socio-political climate in which a range of human potential arts are currently being practiced in the United States. As a clinical psychologist, I participated in the unfolding of a similar process in the mental health field, dating from the 1970’s. As a new acupressure therapist, I am witnessing a repeat performance in the body therapy field.

     My growing concern is that alternative healing arts await a similar fate to psychotherapy. Like psychotherapy, martial arts and body therapies have traditionally been taught and performed in a mentored relationship with a master. Yet today, there are forces at work to attempt to impose external regulation on the enterprises through state legislation and other means. As with therapy, this will predictably fragment not only the learning relationship but whole disciplines. To illustrate, two examples of the same phenomena stand out in recent history. Ehrenreich and English (1973) in their small book Witches, Midwifes, and Nurses, report on how the industrial magnates and the AMA conspired to dismantle a range of competing health care modalities in the early 1900’s in America. This corporate conglomerate used Carnegie employee Abraham Flexner’s research data to captivate state legislatures across the country. The outcome was that male dominated drug and surgery medicine became the sole health care modality for the 20^th Century. More recently in China, Mao initiated a parallel process which continues to this day. Taoist healing arts have been corrupted and industrialized into Chinese Medicine in the name of science and progress, also spearheaded by outcome research data (AKA evidence based treatment protocols). This is documented by Heiner Fruehauf, Ph.D., L. Ac., in The Empty Vessel (Summer,1999).

     Most remarkable is the quest by alternative groups to promote legislative action for licensure and to petition for insurance reimbursement of services. They will not be dissuaded in spite of good advice and evidence to the contrary, particularly the experience of psychotherapists. Therapists are currently trying to undo state laws, insurance regulation and oppressive evidence based treatment protocols which have effectively inhibited spontaneous and experiential psychotherapy.

     As an example, I have vigorously challenged chiropractors over the past several years that seeking insurance "privileges" was not in their best interest. They naively assumed that everybody would be accepted on the practitioner panels. Recently however, in one local town, all six practitioners applied for panel membership. Only two were admitted. Imagine the bitterness amongst the other four as their patients with that insurance coverage start seeing the two empaneled chiropractors. The secondary outcome is that more and more self-pay patients will be demanding to be able to defer fees to their health insurance.

     Another group, the acupuncturists, are surprised that their treatment protocols are now being externally micro-managed as a by-product of becoming insurable. "How could the insurance company tell me how to do treatment over the phone, when they haven’t seen the patient?", the astonished acupuncturist asked. I reiterated that the insurance industry does it with doctors and psychotherapists. Why would acupuncturists be treated differently, and they are now learning from direct experience.

     Alternative practitioners are also clamoring to have their work subjected to research protocols to become a partner in the "evidenced based" treatment elite. I am astonished that they don’t see this as foolhardy, particularly the studies which pit one type of therapy against another. One study of low back pain, for example, will have chiropractors go up against acupuncturists and massage therapists. Who will win the battle of the back pain therapists? Who will get the prize of being awarded all the patient referrals?

     Psycho-dynamically speaking, on a group level we are witnessing an example of what Eric Fromm called "Escape from Freedom". True freedom involves grappling with difficult choices, and the human tendency is to want things easily defined and put in order by a higher authority. It would appear to be easier to have the state and insurance industry regulate clinical practice. Then hopefully, the higher authority will resolve the difficulties of defining ones scope of practice and having to develop a clientele on ones own initiative.

     On the individual level there is a psychological dynamic which I call "the narcissistic prize fighter syndrome". Most boxers, no matter how unskilled, truly believe that they will not get knocked out the next time they step into the ring. Practitioner groups who subject themselves to legislation, the insurance industry and research protocols also think that they won’t get knocked out.