Abstract
st , 2012; revised July 6 th , 2012; accepted July 24 th , 2012 Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) are increasingly used by people in first world countries, almost always in combination with biomedicine. The combination of CAM and biomedicine is now commonly referred to as “integrative medicine” (IM). In Groningen, The Netherlands, we founded a center for integrative psychiatry, offering conventional and complementary mental health care. Like other centers for integrative (mental) health we have mostly received positive reactions although there have been negative and even hostile reactions as well, using phrases like “quackery” and “betrayal”. We will try to illustrate that these polarising qualifications, in which “the good” is being positioned against “the bad” in an over-simplified manner, are unnecessary and not useful. Moreover, it is unlikely that this polarisation will stall the growth of IM. It seems that integration is not only a current tendency in medicine, but also a trend fitting the contemporary spirit of the age in which integration seems to be the most common focus. It can be observed in religion, philosophy, spirituality and psychotherapy as well. This article will discuss the difference between differentiation and integration and will show that the focus on differentiation or integration varies with time, mostly rising as a reaction to each other. The transition from one period to the next is often met with resistance and criticism. If the integrative movement is to survive, it cannot do without differentiation and must find a middle way in which appropriate attention is being paid to keeping the integrated parts sufficiently differentiated and allowing them to keep their own identity.
Highlights
The Latin word “integralis” means: “forming a greater entity”
These changes created a strict separation between recognised treatments on the one hand and other forms of medicine
We provide several typical examples from different spheres of life, restricting ourselves to the themes related to our own field: world view, health care, and scientific research
Summary
The Latin word “integralis” means: “forming a greater entity”. Integration stands for “fusing or making collaborate different parts into a larger whole” or “including into a whole”. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the need for differentiation led to a change in medical laws and regulations in various countries (for instance the Flexner report in 1910 in the United States and the Health Care Implementation Act in 1865 in the Netherlands) These changes created a strict separation between recognised treatments on the one hand (which later became known as biomedicine or conventional medicine) and other forms of medicine (which later became known as alternative medicine). In integrative medicine the principles of evidence-based medicine are applied to regular, complementary and alternative treatments This implies that in choosing an intervention, one should take into account the highest level of available scientific evidence about the different treatment options; the values, preferences and frame of reference of the patient; and the professsionalism and experience of the therapist (Sackett, Straus, Scott Richardson, Rosenberg, & Haynes, 2000). Because of this freedom, post-modern philosophy is offering a visionary framework for integrative thinking and acting
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