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Principles and Practice of Connective Therapy V
The Nature of the Image in Connective Therapy
Dr Alain Abraham Abehsera Do MD
During its treatment procedures, Connective Therapy resorts to the production of a specific type of “image”. It has already been said that this type of image is difficult to obtain and maintain in the “mind” of the operator. Is this difficulty inherent to the technique in general or is it only due to the capacities of the individual that performs it? In other words, are the images of connective therapy • a specific, reproducible and complex processing of real objects (eg the liver, the kidney etc.) through the human mind? • or the product of an artistic activity, variable with each one (since it is known that some individuals are more gifted than others to create images, pictures, melodies etc.)? In other words, are these images natural? Or are they exceptional mental conventions made by exceptional people? In our preceding lectures, we have discussed some of the models of reality offered by the first physicists/philosophers. Let us take two extreme models, those of materialists like Democrites and Epicurus, and those of idealists like Plato or Plotinus. In materialistic terms, the images I have in my minds are passive impressions, motions of the particles of my mind induced by the particles of the external world. Materialists believed that objects emit some form of material emanation which respects the shape of the object seen. This materialistic view on mental images still has many believers, although it is presented in more elaborate forms. In Idealistic terms, mental images can lead us to the true understanding of the object (although they can be misleading when only based on perception). With my mind, I can reach the “essence of the object”. That essence can be its mathematical make-up (vibratory, geometric etc), its immobility in time and space, its fluidity etc. This essence may be called its “noumenon”, as opposed to the “phenomenon”. For instance, there is a phenomenon, in front of me, called a chair. It is a phenomenon in so far as I perceive its color, shape, emplacement in space (the salon), in time, its price, its present state (the scratches made by the cat) etc. I may be interested to find its “noumenon”: what is unique to this chair, or what is universal about that chair, the geometric lines that characterize it, the idea about beauty that lies behind it and that was in the creator’s mind when he designed it, the meaning of its emplacement in the Salon (including psychological, physical etc. reasons). Parmenide, Pythagoras, Plato tried to describe the “noumenon” not the phenomenon. The noumenon stays when the phenomenon (the physical chair) has disappeared. For instance, the style of this chair will stay and influence other stylists way after this particular chair has disappeared. All idealists thinkers search for the noumenon behind the phenomenon, whereas all materialistic thinkers deny the existence of any noumenon behind phenomenon.
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According to materialists, everything can be known about this chair here and now, provided we have the proper machines and proper information. According to idealists, the noumenon of this chair is extremely elusive, I need to make a 180° turn away from immediate perception to reach it. Visualization The notions of “phenomenon” and “noumenon” do not concern only objects, they can be applied to people, events, actions, ideas etc. Let us take an example. I visualize a man that holds a soft plastic balloon. He presses on it on both sides with his two hands. You visualize his hands, his arms and the pressure he exerts. You also visualize the resistance of the balloon. You see the air inside, the fact that the valve is shut and does not let air escape. This man presses on the balloon because he wants to feel whether it needs inflating, in order to play with it. This is a visualization of phenomena. You now try to make abstraction of the scene. The man is still pressing on the balloon, but his image and that of the balloon slowly fade away. You are left with the visualization of “pressing on the balloon” and as you make more and more abstraction of the man and the balloon, you reach a point where no motion occurs but you still get the impression of “pressure” being “measured”. Can it be said that when I try and feel the “essence” of the act of pressing, I reach a point where no motion subsists? This reminds me of the idea of motion proposed by Parmenides. This would be a visualization of “noumenon” (although materialists would simply say here that we are simply experiencing the “principle” of inflating balloons, or more correctly, since materialists do not believe in mental principles, we are going through the motion of pressing on the balloon). Liver Essence Returning to our initial question: are the images we create in CTh, attempts at perceiving the “noumenon” of the liver in general as opposed to the “phenomenon” of that particular liver? Or are we just using some physical property of matter that has nothing to do with “noumena”. For instance, Connective therapy may be resorting to some physical radiation from the thought of the operator, the body of the patient, i.e., a set of “phenomena”. And as phenomena, they are influenced by my state of health, by external cold, heat etc., like all phenomena. This is an extremely important question and obviously, it has no clear-cut answer. Any answer would be dogmatic and thus, destructive. Our duty is to search for the answer through intellectual and sensory means, ie to think and visualize the elements which can be used to answer this question. To achieve that, we need to understand and experience all the elements which compose our visualization of objects. What is it made of? What does it take to visualize an object or an organ? If we believe that we perceive only phenomena, with how much precision do we have to reproduce reality in order to be effective? Or, on the contrary, if we believe in and search for “noumena”, how different from phenomenal reality must our visualizations be? Do we have to imagine something similar (phenomenal) or different (noumenal) from reality?
ISCO Israel School of Connective Osteopathy Jerusalem
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To answer these questions, we must first analyze the fabric of “visualized” objects. As we have said before, they are made of images, for instance of a liver, a kidney, a hormonal gland etc. To make one of these images, we need, however, to resort to another fundamental function of the mind, that of memory. For instance, I look at a book, a picture of the liver and it is through the use of the image “stored” in my memory, that I will work on the patient. With time, and with increased practice and knowledge, my “memory” becomes a huge data-bank from which I will draw the relevant images. But memory is an activity of the mind which is linked to the idea of “time”. It is thanks to my memory that I have an internal perception of time. To analyze thoroughly the process of visualization and check every one of its steps, I thus have to understand the notions of • perception • imagination • memory • time (internal) For that purpose, we will resort to the idea of time in ancient philosophy/physics and to the first historical analysis of time, that made by Augustine of Hippo (St Augustine). Eternal and Corrupt Time For the Greeks, Time was not different from any other object. It was something external, objective and as such, existed in two extreme forms. Plato, for instance, distinguishes the Idea of Time, perfect Eternity, from that of flowing time, ie the corrupt time that we live every minute with our senses. The Idea of Time could not accommodate the idea of “change”. There is a Time “during” which nothing changes or corrupts. The Greeks saw a perfect example of this Time in the perpetual motion of the Sun, planets and stars. Indeed, motion gives us the idea of time. If nothing moves, I cannot know that time has elapsed. Only if I see that something has left its place, can I say, this was here and is now there. In the world of experience, the one we live here on earth, we can only see irregular motions. Things fall, change places without any apparent order. The Greeks considered that the sun and the stars were different. They do move but always in the same perfect circular fashion. Their motion contains the idea of change (they move in circle, change place) but also of lack of change. They are the only natural clocks. They are so perfect that even though they look heavy, they don’t fall. This is an important point: our sensory system is fed by two kinds of images: matter that has no weight and moves in a repetitive fashion (suns and planets) matter that has weight and moves in all sorts of fashions (all matter in this world) From the above, we see that Time is mainly judged and measured through motion. Augustine criticized this idea of time founded on motion and on external objects like planets. He observed that, if time depends on motion, then how do we perceive the present, past and future? These are perceived as internal sensations, internal certainties.
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Time is not felt as a function of external movements. A movement that has already occurred has ceased to exist and therefore cannot teach me about the past; a movement that has not begun has yet to exist and therefore cannot teach us about the future. There only remains the present of the passing moment, and there movement is a “point moving in nothingness”. St Augustine concludes that time does not exist for objects (or for God), it only exists for the soul. It is a property of the human soul. He classifies the various aspects of time from the standpoint of the soul in the present: The present of the past is memory The present of the present is vision The present of the future is expectation, attention Past and future do not exist, they are only representations of our souls in the present. Time is in the soul and when it feels past, present, future as one, it creates a kind of “bubble”, a “distension of the soul” in Augustine’s words. That bubble is more or less voluminous according to the abilities or characteristics of each one of us. Man is not the slave of an external time, he creates it, he is the master of it, and as such he is the master of his own history. Visualization I see a ball that moves freely. I first let it move spontaneously in all the directions that it wants. There is no resistance. Up, down, laterally. This is happening within my head. Question: is the motion of the ball accompanied by any physical sensation? As I make it move from left to right in my visualization, do I feel something when it reaches the outer border of my skull,? Do my eyes follow the motion? Any motion of the ball can be defined as having a starting point (e.g., the upper right hand corner), an end point (lower left-hand corner) and a distance in between. How much of each do I see? Isn’t it true that I perceive the end and the beginning mostly and, only weakly, the path it took to join them? Let us slow the motion now, to the point that the ball is moving very, very slowly. Does it make any changes in relation to the above? Can I feel a smooth, continuous motion or only starting and end points, ie, strokes of motion? When I try and concentrate on the instant of each motion, its present, can I still feel its beginning, do I still keep it in mind? Does it seem that we have to choose, either a perception of the now of the motion or one of its past and future (where it began and ended)?. Can the notion of 3D be applied to time? In other words, are we able at all to perceive at the same time the 3 dimensions of time (past, present and future). In effect, this is what St Augustine affirms, motion is not a good indicator of time.
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Israel School of Connective Osteopathy
Jerusalem
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About Memory Augustine offers us some deep insights on the question I evoked at the beginning of this lecture: what is the nature of the images we use in visualization? I initially stated that in order to visualize, we need to resort to the memory of images learned in books or in dissections or on patients. As if images were deposited in a memory bank account from which we can draw any time what we need. Augustine criticizes the materialistic approach of memory. First, he notes that memory can remember abstract things (number relationships, abstract ideas) that have no physical counterpart. If it were made of passive imprints from external matter on the mind (like on wax), what sort of image is created by ideas like “to believe”, to “understand” etc. Second, it is obvious that memory is not just the act of “drawing on an image bank account”. Augustine says “we remember with joy sad events and with sadness, joyful events”. In other words, memory obviously “transforms” the images that it “keeps”. It adds something to them that is unique. In fact, memory is the most typical manifestation of the soul. It is through memory that we turn external objects into “soul objects”. They become digested and part of us. Memory is that process which allows us to transform the objects of the sensory world into “thought objects”. Thanks to memory, we become “pregnant” with the world and its objects. The question is then, obviously: Are the objects in our minds (when they have become memories) still true, have they not become diminished, poor copies of reality? Or the opposite, as internal, soul objects, are they truer than the external objects? On the one hand, we seem to lose many qualities of objects when we visualize them (many details are lost), on the other hand, when we visualize external objects, we seem to be able to add dimensions to them, like that of time (for instance, the style of this chair, the feelings that led to its creation). If memory is a kind of pregnancy, do objects evolve in us and grow like babies do in a uterus? Some idealists say that the entire world exists in order to become part of the memory of man, to become thought objects. Then and only then, the world grows to reach its full reality. We will have to return to this question of time and study it from several viewpoints. Here are some of the questions: if our CTh treatment is not limited in space, is it limited in time? Are all the pathologies of the human body kept in some kind of physical memory where they can influence its state of health at any given point in time? Is there a notion of 3D and 2D in time-visualization, similar to that in space? Is time a limiting structure, a kind of shell of given duration, the length of which cannot be changed?
ISCO
Israel School of Connective Osteopathy
Jerusalem