Is healing curing? Is curing healing? Does caring cure? Does it heal? With the conceptual framework of the New Theory of Cure, we can look at these questions in a new light. In October 2023, I published a post on the differences between curing, caring, and healing, which – as often happens – led me to a much deeper thought. This resulted in a published paper that presents a complete framework for viewing and analyzing curing, caring and healing actions.
The paper is titled The Natural Evolution of Healing, Caring, and Curing and is published on Academia.edu as well as Researchgate.com..
The paper draws clear lines of distinction between
healing and curing – curing is intentional, healing is unconscious. Healing and curing are a gradation between conscious and unconscious actions.
caring and curing – curing requires addressing cause, caring generally addresses the consequences of illness and concerns of the ill person, only rarely addressing cause. When illnesses causes illness, curing the secondary illness is addressing the consequences of the first, even if the first is past or never cured.
healing and caring – healing comes from the individual acting upon themselves caring comes from their communities. All life forms live in communities and to some extent care for each other.
The paper compares different healing, curing, and caring actions based on these definitions and explores gradations between each pair. Healing, for example is always a curative action, but curing is not healing, although it often supports and almost always requires healing for completion. Caring is sometimes curing, sometimes not. Curing – is sometimes a caring action, and sometimes not depending on the case, the goals, and the actions undertaken.
The paper also notes that
- healing is limited to changes in body, mind, spirit, and communities.
- curing might be accomplished by addressing causes of illness in diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments.
- caring is accomplished by changing the ill person or their situation to support curing and healing, but sometimes – palliative care, is simply to support the patient when incurable conditions are present.
The paper concludes with a diagram that brings healing, caring, and curing into a single framework that illustrates the relationships between the three and how they overlap.
What do you think? I’d love to read your thoughts about these ideas and the paper.
to your health, tracy
Author: A New Theory of Cure
