Body/mind from Dichotomy to Double-bind1

Twenty-five years ago, almost to the date, an enthusiastic young lady with high hopes, and higher ambitions, joined this fraternity of the "Shr inks" m u c h to the consternation, disapproving tongue-clacking and head shaking of the relatives and friends. Today, tha t fraternity has bestowed the honour of its highest office on her, making her proud to be one of the privileged few, who, while t reading the same pa th left their illustrious footprints on the sands of t ime. Dear Colleagues, I stand before you today in all humili ty to thank you for this great honour, p ray that I prove worthy of your choice, and pledge to work for the betterment of our great fraternity to the best of my capacity. Having grown u p under the vigilent care of our revered family physician, who believed in looking after the good health of our body, mind and soul, I developed a heal thy respect for the d ic tum "Mens sana in corpora sano". Therefore, during my underand post-graduate t raining period, I was amazed a t the dichotomy tha t existed in the minds of the lay as well as medical population between the mind and the body. While it was fashionable to suffer from exotic bodily diseases and compare notes about them at coffee a n d mahajong sessions, it was shameful to be inflicted by mental disorders ; and while sophisticated consultants probed, pummelled and cut open the body to look for mysterious diseases which could bear impressive latin diagnostic labels, the latter were contemptuously relegated to the backrooms, where exorcists, sorcerers, and lastly, menta l hospital superintendents could furtively reach and treat them. From their prestigious positions my respected teachers, each one a specialist in his own field, left an indelible impression on the minds of the medicos under their teaching care that there was a distinct schism between the mind and the body, and a respectable physician only catered to the needs of the sick body—a view which came as an emotional shock to me. T h e day I jo ined the faculty of my alma mater, I determined to obliterate, or at least narrow this schism in the impressionable minds of the budding medicos. I have been striving to do just tha t in the past 22 years, and in the process learnt so m u c h abou t the knowledge the ancients of all cutures had about the mindbody double bind ; the evolution of the ever-widening schism as medical research became sophisticatedly advanced, wi th very few rickety bridges still holding on to prevent a complete split ; and the bright future, with the modern techniques bringing newer concepts to reaffirm the double bind, which I aim to share with you today. From time immemorial the ancient philosophers and physicians have pondered this question of mind/body relationship. Earliest medicine, whether of ancient I ranian, Egyptian, Chinese, Ind ian , Akkadian, Scandinavian, Grecian, R o m a n or Polynesian origin, had the same type of cuie for the diseases of the mind and the body-herbal medicines and/or verbal charms,