The Freedom To Heal: In California and Beyond
by Richard Pitt
Healing is a word that evokes many different impressions. It can be said that to heal is to love, or to love is to heal. The healing power of love as seen between two lovers, among the members of a family, or within a community or church is a liberating act that belongs to no one person and cannot be defined, measured or regulated. It is free. However, healing is also part of many models of medical/healing practices and as such it becomes a prescribed part of the relationship between healer/physician and patient/client. It is a different aspect of healing than the simple yet profound expression of love, yet it is not fundamentally different. It is defined by a similar impulse to help and to reach out.
Defining who has a right to heal becomes part of the dialogue about the role of the myriad forms of healing in our society, from physicians and hospitals to the complex and endless variety of physical and psychological therapies that we have available in modern society. We find ourselves between the polarities of seeing healing as a free expression of love and the regulated and highly structured medical system we have today. These are clearly not exclusive to one another but represent the spectrum in which healing takes place in our society
Physicians have always enjoyed a unique role in most cultures. They have a certain authority, a form of knowledge and power given to them as determined by the personal, social and cultural needs of each society. Often this knowledge is a privileged and private one, requiring complicated initiations for the practitioner. This is equally the cases in industrial and more primitive societies. However, at the same time, there has often been a powerful healing dynamic within the wider culture, often found with the women of a society and with other authorities such as priests and midwives. They have often fulfilled the needs of their communities when physicians were not available, did not know what to do, or where the skill needed was beyond their domain.
In modern societies, an increasing level of control over much of life has led to a greater regulation of healing and medicine, including who is allowed to perform these duties. In the United States, every state has a statute that defines who can and cannot practice medicine. As the medical profession has become more regulated, the training and scope of practice of physicians has become more clearly mandated. A problem with this situation is that, in so doing, the statutes in nearly every state have defined all forms of healing as medicine, and therefore monopolizing all healing within the domain of medical practice. Unless there are explicit exemptions in medical statutes that allow for particular healing modalities, ALL healing by default is defined as “the practice of medicine” and therefore is under the exclusive domain of physicians, whether they are trained in these modalities or not. Healing and medicine become the same thing instead of seeing medicine as just one part of the healing dynamic.
The main way to circumnavigate these exclusive statutes is to create a separate legal identity for other healing modalities. This is typically done through registration or licensure and it must be done individually for each of the myriad forms of alternative and complementary forms of healing. This has occurred for such therapies as acupuncture, chiropractic, naturopathy, psychological therapy and massage therapy. However, many other non-regulated healing modalities exist outside of any legal identity and in theory are therefore illegal if performed by a non-physician, irrespective of training.
This is the current state of affairs in most states. However, in 2003, California enacted a new law that clarified this situation. This law was passed as California senate bill SB577. It simply states that if a person is practicing a non-regulated form of healing modality that doesn’t involve the practice of conventional medicine, or compromise any other exclusive domain of practice; and if this modality is basically non-harmful, then a person should be freely allowed to practice their skill without interference and without requiring permission from the state. In addition, each practitioner must give a disclosure form to their client, clarifying their training, experience and specifying that they are not a doctor and that their role is complementary to other medical practices. The client must sign this disclosure form, must be given a copy, and the practitioner keeps another copy in their records. In this way, the client is given some knowledge and assurance as to the experience and role that the healer will take in their care, and the healer has also clearly defined his or her responsibility to the client. As in any contractual agreement, both parties are responsible and any disputes can be addressed appropriately within existing legal parameters.
The significance of this law should not be underestimated. It liberates many effective and complementary forms of healing from the dark clouds of possible prosecution. It rebalances what had become a monopolistic law that was strangling the very idea of healing and limiting it in a narrow way. The old legal setting imposed the authority of the state on clients, narrowing their healing possibilities and therefore suppressing their freedom of choice and personal responsibility. In so doing, it was actually protecting the power of one medical group over another rather than protecting the public from the abuses of bad medicine.
The freedom to heal needs to be seen as a fundamental right, not just a privilege ordained by the state. The legitimacy of any law needs to be measured by its actual utility. Does it serve the greater good or merely a narrow interest group? This truth is essential in the wonderfully diverse world of healing because it expresses the most human of all impulses, the desire to enable the healing of another person.