Why People Don't Heal by Catherine Myss: Book Review

Introduction: The Culture of Woundology

It is an all-too-familiar scenario. You meet someone, and almost immediately they tell you sordid personal details about their past and private life. You feel uncomfortable because of the intimate nature of their confession and draw away. It has become almost inevitable in our culture of celebrity confessions to encounter people who are willing to tell everyone why they are so "screwed up" and how much suffering they have endured. Rather than seeing this as a potentially positive development or an example of greater openness in society, Catherine Myss views it as a symptom of what is wrong with the world — something she calls "woundology." "Woundology" is a refusal to heal, a refusal to seek health. It is wallowing in illness and negative emotions. Myss's book Why People Don't Heal attempts to provide a more positive vision of forgiveness, emotional healing, and moving on from past troubles than is offered by today's culture of victimology and "woundology."

"Woundology," according to Myss, is not a new phenomenon, although our culture may unintentionally encourage it more than other cultures do. It reflects the human tendency to hold onto negative emotions, sickness, and old slights rather than to progress. In our personal narratives — the stories we tell about ourselves and how we have "become" ourselves — are written into our biology and our bodies. Often, we end up holding onto negative things rather than accentuating the positive. It is our choice, Myss states, whether we become defined by trauma or choose to heal. There is a danger that experiencing trauma can become part of our identity, and it can even become a way of manipulating others. Talking about the past can be a way of saying "look at me," like the overly familiar individual who tells a stranger more than the stranger cares to know about his or her sad childhood, as an explanation for current bad behavior.

Identity, Trauma, and the Refusal to Heal

Instead, Myss argues, people need to let go of wounds — internal and external — in order to heal. People do not heal, she contends, because they unconsciously refuse to, having made their wounds and sicknesses part of their identity. They have made their wounds "work" for them in a negative fashion. People grow comfortable in their identity as a wronged child and fear change and true self-empowerment. For someone who has been sick and wounded for most of his or her life, health seems like a frightening prospect. Healing and change are synonymous for Myss. This does not mean society should show disrespect to those who have been injured, or that the injured should simply ignore the past. But society needs to respect the person, not the trauma. Living in the past takes away the energy people need to dwell in the present and to live in a positive fashion.

A real-life example illustrates what Myss is describing. Consider someone who continually makes excuses for verbally abusive behavior toward loved ones on the grounds that he was abused as a child. Child abuse is a tragedy, of course, but using it as a rationalization for cruelty ultimately allows the abuser to avoid taking responsibility for his mistakes. His pain is perpetuated and inflicted upon others, causing further wounds. This shows how no one is healed by a fixation on the past. A fixation on bad memories also renders the past abuser an important, haunting figure in the former victim's life, blocking forward movement that could result in a more positive view of the future.

Myss asks: how can someone be "whole" if they always see themselves as a former victim? Being a victim is not shameful, but it is not an honor either, nor does it make someone special and unique, since everyone is sick or a victim at some point in life. The person who has suffered the most should not "win" some special status; rather, the true strength lies in moving on from suffering. By holding onto old wounds, people cannot forgive, and forgiveness is necessary to make positive sense of the past. As long as we are still rehashing old events, we are still "living" the story of abuse, over and over again.

The Mind-Body Connection in Myss's Philosophy

Myss presents her philosophy as a kind of how-to guide for mental and physical healing, not simply as a polemic against the self-indulgent culture of self-help in modern society. Her perspective is unusual in that she sees physical and emotional suffering as the same thing. The inability to overcome past traumas can actually result in physical illnesses. In her words, "your biography becomes your biology" — how you remember your personal story influences your ability to heal from a physical ailment. With this knowledge about the danger of "woundology," people can instead explore how to heal the mind and spirit, which in turn leads to healing of the body.

By changing the mind, a person who is sick can alter the state of homeostasis in their body. Past traumas, in Myss's view, create the body's current state of physical health. By changing our perspective on our personal history, we can change the present state of our bodies. Myss admits that simply healing the spirit will not automatically cause every case of cancer to go into remission, but she does suggest that a sick soul can result in a sick — or at least sicker — body. Changing the mind does not erase the damage done to the body through trauma, but it is the critical step forward that all sufferers must take in order to heal.

Conclusion: A Flawed but Tangentially Useful Work

Myss's words, however tangentially, touch upon the role that mental activity — like stress — can sometimes play in the creation of a holistic state of physical or mental health. A failure to heal is clearly the result, in some cases, of a refusal to let go of the past. However, Myss's rather muddled rhetoric is hardly the complete solution to the failure of medicine and therapy to address all of the ailments in the world.