Laurence Foss

Proposes a radically reconfigured medical model centered on mind-body interaction.

The End of Modern Medicine chronicles the work of a small, influential band of medical theorists and clinicians who over the past decade have sought to redress the physical fundamentalism of the biomedical model that shaped their professional training. Laurence Foss challenges the prevailing medical model whereby mind and body are essentially separated, and charts a new "psychobiological" course. Asking fresh questions, raising new possibilities, probing long-established preconceptions, Foss presents a radically reconfigured medical model. This model accounts for the full range of findings in the experimental literature, most notably those surfacing over the past quarter century in psychophysiological studies which show a correlation between psychosocial variables and disease susceptibility that are in line with what more basic sciences tell us about the behavior of material systems and the nature of scientific explanation. Foss also critically analyzes the regulative ideals of today's medical research community and puts modern science itself, from which these ideals derive, under a microscope.