Placebo Effect — How the Head Heals the Body
The placebo effect is obviously the result of mental influence (in the transitive sense). There are now countless empirical studies on the subject, but there is almost no theory of how it works, and certainly not a consistent one.
I am not arguing here on an empirical or micro level, nor on a philosophical level. I am trying to develop a model that allows an understanding of the complex interplay of different factors and influences on a medium abstract level.
The question is, how does the brain or consciousness influence the body? To do this, it must be clarified how the brain or consciousness works and how the body is structured.
Let’s start with a basic thesis: Life is made up of dead building blocks, none of these building blocks contain life on their own. Therefore, life can only be explained by the way these dead building blocks work together. Life can, therefore, only be explained in terms of structure and cannot be reduced to individual elements.
If we look at phylogeny, we see that life has developed different ways of working and methods of regulating the exchange with its environment. While single-celled organisms synthesize proteins and react to chemical gradients, new working logic has emerged in the course of development. Multicellular organisms communicate via special compounds (gap junctions) and exchange chemical and electrical information. The simplest organisms invented hormonal communication, and with the central nervous systems, electrochemical neuronal processing came into play.
All these stages are contained in our organism and overlap there integratively, but distinctly and still working according to their logic. So it has to be about how these levels communicate with each other.
Let’s think of life as a dynamic system, not as a physical system, but as a biological system. The difference is that physical systems are passive, whereas biological systems are active, self-organizing and reproducing. A dynamic biological system structures its environment by transforming it into structures that correspond to it and thus make it manageable. This applies to metabolism as well as to pattern formation in the brain.
Activity means the formation of structure. Each of the levels mentioned forms structures. This means that each level can only be understood in terms of its structure and not in terms of the individual elements. Structure formation takes place as an assimilation of elements and thus an extension as well as the subsequent compression, shortening and reduction in the form of metastructures.
In the realm of thought, we call these metastructures abstractions. In them, structures are summarized and abstracted. Their information density is high, and thus, they have a controlling character. The structural dynamic system of life forms metastructures that control. This explains the preservation and development of the dynamic biological system.
In general, we can speak of an information gradient that drives the system and virtually forces it to rebalance itself. This creates a constant information differential that applies to all microscopic and macroscopic developmental steps. The concept of information can optionally be replaced by the concept of structure. The result is a topology with high and low structure, or with high and lower information density.
What is the flow of information between the different levels? The genome contains the construction instructions for all levels. Thus, the levels are constituted from bottom to top (bottom-up). Accordingly, the differentiation increases from the bottom to the top. Why is that? As a rule, biological systems increase in complexity according to the above-mentioned principle of extension. This also increases the potential density of information. In other words, biological systems are built from the bottom up.
Conversely, this means that this information gradient results in an information gradient from top to bottom. This means that there is regulatory determination from the top down.
If a disturbance occurs at the upper level — the central nervous system — it is passed on downwards. Let’s imagine level A as a network structure with 100 nodes and level B below it as a network with 10 nodes. If each node of network A is connected to each node of network B, ten times as many connections arrive at each node of network B as vice versa.
If net A changes by pulling or compressing, net B also changes, but not linearly causally, but in a non-linear way. If we look at network A under oscillatory conditions, an asynchrony arises for network B, which is also nonlinear. The farther apart two planes are, the more indirect the influence. We know from the theory of dynamical systems that such inductions can escalate and tilt and enter a pathogenic state that is irreversible. Induction can take place at any level and continues downwards.
When entropy exceeds a critical point, it can no longer be exported, as is common for any life process (point of no return). The determination from above is followed by an indeterministic development of the affected plane within a phase space. Psychosomatic disorders run along this pathway.
There is a second connection down. While the one just described is subconscious, the second connection is an intentional one. The first is a loss of control, the second is ‘consciously’ induced.
The brain is a physical organ, consciousness is a property of the brain, thinking and feeling are or arise through physical change. As we have seen, this not only changes the brain, but possibly the entire body. If no irreversible disturbances have occurred, we can reverse them.
The brain — we disregard the significance of the ego as a controlling instance through the agglomeration of metastructures here — can be thought of as a topology of highly and less highly structured areas. If we assign consciousness (not in the medical or ontological sense) to the highly structured areas and subconscious to the less structured subconscious, then on the one hand, there is a smooth transition, and on the other hand, differences in dealing with reality can be shown. It must be added here that the control of somatic processes such as breathing, heartbeat, etc. does not need to be taken into account here.
It can then be roughly assumed that primarily the highly structured areas are coded linguistically abstractly, while the others are coded more symbolically and in the form of narratives. However, it is not possible to make an exact separation, as the two overlap and overlap.
However, if we separate the two areas analytically, the consciously abstract realm is more removed from the integrative identity of body and mind than the subconscious. This is because linguistic abstractions refer less to the individual himself and more to social agreements in the form of language and are more complex. So if we want to have a mental influence on somatic processes, the symbolic-narrative realm of the subconscious is a good choice.
The placebo effect uses this path purely by chance or as intended by the therapist. The narratives for this are well known: doctor’s coats, trust, administration of tablets, and many others trigger in the patient what is called expectation in placebo research and what I would describe as an offer to compensate for the dynamic imbalance that arises psychologically due to an illness.
This offer can also be done in another way, namely by learning practices that contain these narratives. Such offers can be found, for example, in Far Eastern teachings. There, these offers are usually spiritually linked. However, one can also apply these narratives without spiritual accessories and then have the same or even greater successes, as the spiritual part can be more of a psychological hindrance for many.
The advantage of such techniques lies in the constant availability and promotion of the autonomy of the practitioners. But what exactly happens here? By means of information gradient, we are able to exert the influence of the CNS on the endocrine system and to have a harmonizing effect there. Through feedback, we are even able to have a focusing effect, i.e. to address certain areas of the body to which a connection can be made, e.g. heart, stomach, intestines, but also other organs or areas of the body. Autogenic training has many such influences.
Our symbolic language of the subconscious mind is linked to the limbic system, to which the hypothalamus belongs. Together with the pituitary gland, this controls a large part of the hormonal system. The endocrine system not only regulates the communication between the organs, but is also responsible for ensuring that the organ level oscillates in accordance with the rules. The information gradient thus influences the endocrine system as a whole, but can even address individual organs, because the central nervous system reaches into every corner of the body and, together with the endocrine system, accesses a single organ through feedback.
This can be put into practice by using appropriate methods. However, it does not work by making the mental influence rationally valid, but by ‘eliminating’ rationality by letting narratives speak through symbols and thus eliminating exactly what classical philosophy calls spirit. At that moment, therefore, the brain is not the bearer of spirit, but it is an organ like any other. It is thus possible to secularize spiritual methods based on a long tradition.
I have used such a method called Prana and have achieved surprising results both in my own experiment and with others. The hand plays an important role in this. It is used to symbolically purify negative energy. The close connection between cognition and gestures could be demonstrated. It is not so much the expectation but rather the conviction of healing that accompanies such techniques. But the decisive factor here is the symbolism that makes us believe that we can remove really bad things from the body.
I refer to this method as an affirmative narrative action practice, which the subject can apply at will after some practice. In advance, however, health problems should be clarified by a doctor.
