~~~~~~~~~ An Introduction ~~~~~~~~~

Elderly people enjoy talking about their youth. I am no exception. But how to do it without cheating the listener who has turned to this Forum on the question of the Healing Crisis? Is it too big a stretch of the imagination to claim that some aspects of being young are a form of Healing Crisis?

Leading up to the cessation of hostilities in 1945 I spent a year as a student in London. I was 18 and the usual upheavals of that age were not helped by the anxieties of where Hitler's last fling aerial bombardment was going to happen. The Life Force(!) channelled by my ears to the discovery of music and, hey presto, you were inducted into a Healing Crisis - (perhaps Healing Catharsis would describe it a touch more accurately) - of the first magnitude.

A little earlier in my history, my mother had introduced Food Reform to the family table.

Unfortunately (for the family) the first initial change of life style was accompanied by lots of Health Information: Health food presented in tandem with a detailed commentary will forever represent a challenge to our mental/physical digestive powers. And so the question arises: in such circumstances are watershed experiences - 'Crises' - possessed of a healing, or a problem inducing, influence? (I am anxious not to be seen as a pussyfooting user of language, but I am also mindful of the swiftness with which dogma can be introduced. . . .).

The classical employment of the term 'Crisis' one associates with the age old complaint of inflammation of the lungs - pneumonia. Treatment - in the days before anti biotic - was geared to bringing the patient to a pitch where the fever reached a critical point after which - physician and soul willing - the disease became converted to a Healing one. Real Drama.

Summing up, I see the Healing Crisis as a confrontation between an individual whose grip on life has weakened and a 'Healer' who is committed to help restore equilibrium.

One would perhaps say 'a meaningful conflict'

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