Acknowledgement

Introducing aphorism

1. Introduction

2. The medical paradigm and the anomalies of normal medicine

2.1. The medical paradigm

a) a trivial concept of medicine

b) measurements without semantics

c) the autistic-undisciplined thinking in medicine

d) causal connections

e) deficient maps

f) generalization and individualization

g) the practitioner’s paradox

2.2. Perception and intervention

2.3. The psychosomatic confusion

a) the Cartesian split

b) minor concepts

c) mind as a kind of ‘soul’

d) mind as brain function

e) mind as inner experience

f) mind as behaviour

g) conglomerates

h) environment and its limits

i) comorbidity and the psychosomatic complex

k) conclision

2.4. The placebo effect

a) the placebo effects and their paradoxes

b) the semiotic approach

c) formalisation of the placebo effect

d) systems approach and individualisation

2.5. The limits of evidence based medicine

a) the human factor

b) evaluation and validity

c) validity and the consequences for practice

d) lack of significance and predictability

e) time and process

f) surrogate parameter

g) rare side effects

h) arbitrary causalisation

i) conclusion

2.6. The magic of reference values

2.7. The meaningless value

2.8. Complexity

a) the non-trivial nature of nutrition

b) the bacterial flora

c) the viral flora

3. Epistemological Fundamentals

3.1. Formal logic – syntax and semantics

3.2. Russell, the paradox and the therapy of diseases

3.3. Gödel, the blind spot and the illusion of completeness

3.4. Heinz von Foerster’s decidable and undecidable questions

3.5. Gotthard Günther’s polycontextural logic

3.6. Bateson’s frame and content

3.7. Watzlawick and the communication

3.8. Korzybski’s map and territory

3.9. Peirce, semiotics and the magic of medicine

3.10. Thomas Kuhn and the paradigm

4. Systemic Basics

4.1. Signal and information

4.2. Recursivity and self fulfilling prophecies

4.3. Higher orders of learning

4.4. Cybernetic Cycles

4.5. Trivial and non-trivial machines

4.6. Second-order cybernetics in medicine

a) the therapeutic relationship

b) neuroscience and addiction

c) osteoporosis and the drug paradigm

4.7. Systems theory

4.8. Autopoiesis

a) neurophysiology and the funnel of Nuremberg

b) the biochemical system and the lesson of psychoactive drugs

c) the visce-neuro-muscular system and specific trigger points

4.9. Patterns

4.10. Emergence

4.11. States and the nature of change

5. Empiric medicine and systemic approaches

5.1. CAM and observational medicine

5.2. Systemic psychotherapy – from causes to solutions

a) structural psychotherapy

b) strategic psychotherapy

5.3. Hippocrates – rhythms and logic

a) poise and inflammation

b) critical days and chronomedicine

c) the logic of the process

d) processual diagnosis

e) changing the operator

5.4. Balneology and the beauty of dignity

a) from pleasure to specific treatment

b) beauty and dignity – the ‘placebo’ of human values

c) hydrotherapy as structural intervention

d) inner cleansing and the experimental setting

5.5. Homeopathy - observation and research in chronic disease

a) chronic disease and miasms

b) atopic disease and psora

c) atopic disease and inflammation

d) other miasms and endophenotypes

5.6. Chinese Medicine and circular relations

a) from systemic thinking to barefoot medicine

b) analogical and semiotic thinking

c) the missing distinction between cause and effect

d) the relational aspect and circular organization

5.7. Efficacy of CAM – the methodological problem

6. Towards a systemic medicine

6.1. The necessity of a systemic medicine

6.2. From specific disease to network pathologies

6.3. Regulation and disease

6.4. Robustness and rigidity

6.5. Central and distributed control

6.6. Hardening

6.7. Network pathologies

6.8. First order therapy and the concept of suppression

6.9. Second order therapy is change

6.10. Stimulus and reaction – the Arndt-Schulz’ Rule

6.11. Initial deterioration

6.12. Biological hierarchies and the individual prognosis

6.13. Requisite variety

6.14. The therapeutic attitude

Closing aphorism

Appendices

I. Advice to young doctors of the BMJ's editorial board

II. Celsus: On medicine

III. Genetical behaviourism

IV. A schismogenetic case

V. The Viet Nam veteran - a case of Milton Erickson

VI. Biological hierarchies in CAM

References

Abbreviations

Biographical Note