We hear much today about the “mind-body connection.” Physicians, biological
scientists,mental health professionals, and the public at large discuss,debate, embrace,repudiate, criticize, and hold it up to scrutiny.Physicians and scientists are no longer wholly in the grip of Cartesian dualism,the nineteenth-century doctrine that separated mind (or soul) and body, but with rare exceptions they have not replaced the old dualism witha coherent, philosophically and scientifically rooted nondualism. A substantial portion of the public appears to believe in a mind-body connection, but the popular understanding of this phenomenon is a simplified dilution of an emergent body of knowledge, and the mind-body treatmentswidely available are too few and often superficial. Part of the reason for this lack of depth is the current conceptualization of the mind-body relationship.The popular belief, both in academia and among the public, is that we need only study and acknowledge how mind and body are “connected”
to successfully set aside Cartesian dualism.