Disputes With New Age Proponents Over Physical Ailments
Spaink first came into the national limelight by accusing New Age writers such as Louise Hay, Thorwald Dethlefsen and Bernie Siegel of over-simplifying physical ailments by reducing them to a purely psychological phenomenon. Spaink, herself suffering from multiple sclerosis, was insulted by the suggestion that her disease was nothing more than the result of her own lack of willingness to heal. (Compare Idealism and responsibility assumption with Materialism; see also New Thought Movement.)
Her essay Het strafbare lichaam ("The Penal Body") coined neologisms such as kwakdenken ("quack thinking") and orenmaffia ("mind-Mafia") that even made it into the Dutch language dictionary. The latter term derived from the expression that something is "all between the ears," in other words, "all in the mind."
Read more about this topic: Karin Spaink
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