Mind Cure Medicalized: The Emmanuel Movement and Its Heirs

Abstract

This chapter describes how members of the American medical and religious establishment appropriated some of the suggestive methods taught by Mind Curers and channeled them into mainstream Protestantism, scientific psychology, and orthodox medicine. The Emmanuel Clinic, a mental health and social work program founded by a group of elite, male clergy and physicians, was the linchpin in this process. The Emmanuel Movement that spread outward from the original Boston clinic influenced other clergy and physicians, who went on to develop Clinical Pastoral Education for chaplaincy, the fields of psychosomatic medicine and pastoral counseling, and the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. This chapter also describes early medical research on the placebo effect, the relaxation response, and other psychological and physiological effects of meditation. Many pioneers in the fields of religion, medicine, and psychology set the stage for Mindfulness to burst onto the scene in the 1970s.