As can be gathered from the details given with respect to my personal development and professional activities, my position is that treatment given according to Western Medicine for the physical manifestation of a disease is absolutely necessary and expedient. Such treatment modalities have made considerable progress over the past years, and these advances have clearly improved prognosis in many malignant diseases. However, a view based exclusively on Western Medicine, as now experienced in many places, is unable to provide conclusive answers to important questions regarding the development and prevention of diseases, as much as the complete recovery of one‘s state of health.

The arbitrary separation of organisms in a physical and mental/spiritual level, together with the focus on the bodily within Western Medicine, as laid down by René Descartes in the 17th century, stashed away man‘s holistic perspective on health and illness. Medicine became a natural science and largely dispensed with its competencies in the field of the humanities. Approaches to unite and integrate the dual principle of physical-somatic and psychic-spiritual aspects, e.g. in the framework of psychooncology, have actuated this field.

The epistemic foundation upon which diseases develop is ultimately linked to the insight that change never exclusively takes place at the physical level, but rather has an energetic cause and thus originates in the mental area.

The Far Eastern teachings have regarded man for many thousands of years as an entity consisting of body and mind. This is why the basic mental cause is taken into account when treating organic symptoms. An increase in acceptance for this perspective explains today‘s boom of Far Eastern ways of thinking in the West.

Altogether, I am concerned with a perspective that sees patients in their wholeness and refrains from limiting itself to physical ailments. This results in a particular significance given to aetiology.

By all means, one may postulate that diseases represent key messages that bear a meaning in the lives of those involved. Many statements regarding positive changes in the personal circumstances of one‘s life, one‘s own view on life, the awareness and beauty of life, and the frequently elementary change and healing of psychic strain most eloquently bear witness to this.

Personally, I feel very privileged by being able to actively take part in health care and attempt to expand my focus beyond the purely physical. Intensive communication with patients constitutes a delightful and challenging task. People under exceptional circumstances urgently require mediators who may accompany them in coping with their disease, to release them into self-responsibility. Physician-patient relationships should be marked by partnership and patients‘ involvement in the process of recovering health should never be underestimated. Those involved play the key role. We companion physicians are called to contribute to the process of healing with all our means. In my mind, spirituality – that is, the question as to the meaning of all things in life – plays a major role in this process. In my experience, those concerned also understand and live this to a large extent.

A crucial maxim which I draw attention to in my first encounters with patients is that disease has nothing at all to do with guilt or punishment. The period of time following cancer often represents a new phase in the patients‘ lives, in which some issues giving reason to certain thinking processes or emotional patterns can be beheld, perceived and healed. The extent to which dealing with such a problem may change prognosis has not been evidenced and thus is unclear in strictly scientific terms. Yet it is a fact that dealing with burdening circumstances and associated remedies – releasing and healing encumbering emotional patterns – can lead to an important improvement in one’s quality of life and a considerable increase in the zest for life.

As a matter of principle, those concerned must feel free to decide in what way they should deal with their disease. Dealing with a disease represents an individual process in which the liberty of decision and will are of prime importance. I myself generally attempt to explain to my patients the meaningfulness of dealing both with their psychic-spiritual and their physical condition.

In conclusion we as physicians are called to deal with our patients in an affectionate and compassionate manner, to respect them in their wholeness and to consider the various aspects of their disease. Patients‘ feeling of being accepted by those who attend to them, sympathy, appreciation, regardfulness in terms of patients‘ sensitivities, and diligence together are medical tenors that are particularly important, also in the framework of high-tech medicine.