Mind over matter

You can regard the human body as a machine if you want to

Albert Mason was a doctor whose career spanned the 2nd half of the 20th century. He started out as an anesthesiologist, and learned that he could control pain effectively without side effects via hypnosis. 

He went on to discover that he could cure diseases (he specialized in skin diseases) with hypnosis, and became famous as a hypnotherapist. The epiphany came when a patient came in covered in black, ugly warts. He offered the patient a post-hypnotic suggestion that his right arm only would have clear, soft skin.

Only after the success of his hypnotherapy did Dr Mason learn that the patient had a rare congenital disease (icthyosiform erithrodermia of Brocq). According to Western medicine, he lacked a gene necessary to create the skin’s lower layer. No matter.

But eventually, Dr Mason realized that most of his patients were not really cured, but rather their skin symptoms were displaced. They developed stomach problems or depression or their personalities transformed in nasty ways or they became alcoholic or obese.

He became convinced that most medical symptoms are actually a somaticization of some deep need for healing or attention. We do our patients a disservice when we treat the symptom.

Dr Mason’s career path led to psychiatry, and the legacy of Dr Melanie Klein in particular. But there, too, a failure of the diagnostic system to consider the whole person disappointed and frustrated him. This interview was conducted in 2016, and Albert Mason passed on in 2018, age 92.