The Stepansky Medical Encyclopedia View in Encyclopedia →

Placebo

, psychiatry, alternative medicine, and

“Psychiatrists vigorously deny any resemblance of their craft to alternative medicine, yet sometimes the doctors who give placebos live in the same world as psychiatrists, with the same respect for the mind and its power over the body, the same respect for listening” (Spiro, 51). . . . Suggestion should come out of the therapeutic alliance of patient and physician.