Georg Groddeck - Method

Method

"He who draws the conclusion that I mentally medicate a human who has broken his leg is very true – but I adjust the fracture and dress the wound. And then – I give him a massage, make exercises with him, give a daily bath to the leg with water at 45°C for half an hour and I take care that he does neither gorge nor booze, and every now and then I ask him: Why did you break your leg, you yourself ?"

With such and other methods the German physician Georg Groddeck, who practised in Baden-Baden and was the pathfinder of psychosomatic medicine, astonished his numerous listeners and readers. His therapy connects naturopathic treatment with psychoanalytic, suggestive and hypnotic elements. His foot and arm bath, massages and dietary cuisine are still practised today, although the bold doctrine of salvation, where he mauled his patients, is necessarily quite authoritarian, and a more reserved approach would be judged appropriate today. He said “To provide obedience foundation of medical art”.

Read more about this topic:  Georg Groddeck

Famous quotes containing the word method:

    Letters are above all useful as a means of expressing the ideal self; and no other method of communication is quite so good for this purpose.... In letters we can reform without practice, beg without humiliation, snip and shape embarrassing experiences to the measure of our own desires....
    Elizabeth Hardwick (b. 1916)

    If all feeling for grace and beauty were not extinguished in the mass of mankind at the actual moment, such a method of locomotion as cycling could never have found acceptance; no man or woman with the slightest aesthetic sense could assume the ludicrous position necessary for it.
    Ouida [Marie Louise De La Ramée] (1839–1908)

    I have a new method of poetry. All you got to do is look over your notebooks ... or lay down on a couch, and think of anything that comes into your head, especially the miseries.... Then arrange in lines of two, three or four words each, don’t bother about sentences, in sections of two, three or four lines each.
    Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926)