The Placebo Effect: An Interdisciplinary Exploration

by Anne Harrington

A mere "symbol" of medicine--the sugar pill, saline injection, doctor in a white lab coat--the placebo nonetheless sometimes produces "real" results. Medical science has largely managed its discomfort with this phenomenon by discounting the placebo effect, subtracting it as an impurity in its data through double-blind tests of new treatments and drugs. This book is committed to a different perspective--namely, that the placebo effect is a "real" entity in its own right, one that has much to teach us about how symbols, settings, and human relationships literally get under our skin.

Anne Harrington's introduction and a historical overview by Elaine Shapiro and the late Arthur Shapiro, which open the book, review the place of placebos in the history of medicine, investigate the current surge in interest in them, and probe the methodological difficulties of saying scientifically just what placebos can and cannot do. Combining individual essays with a dialogue among writers from fields as far-flung as cultural anthropology and religion, pharmacology and molecular biology, the book aims to expand our ideas about what the placebo effect is and how it should be seen and studied. At the same time, the book uses the challenges and questions raised by placebo phenomena to initiate a broader interdisciplinary discussion about our nature as cultural animals with minds, brains, and bodies that somehow manage to integrate "biology" and "culture," "mechanism" and "meaning," into a seamless whole.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Psychology, Medicine

274 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Rachel Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Outdated but some hot takes

[Amber · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a required reading for university . This book is a collection of articles written by different authors, therefore my interest waned. Some chapters were great and I felt like I got a lot from the chapter. Other chapters were dense, dense, dense.

Sure, it is fine to be dense, especially when your title is the The Placebo Effect: An interdisciplinary Exploration. However, there are plenty of amazing pieces of literature circulating about the placebo effect, that are simple enough for many readers to understand. While, I am not suggesting to "dumb-down" the writing, I think it is important for Harrington (the editor) to choose articles that cater to a large crowd of readers. Readers that span different levels should be able to get full enjoyment out of this book.
Many of my classmates were reading
.

Dispenza's book has better ratings than Harrington's. Both explore the meaning behind the, sometimes obscure, idea of the placebo. However, Dispenza takes the placebo and makes it relevant to his readers and does so in a way that is informative and inclusive.

I have read my fair share of scientific dissertations, articles, and studies. So, while my classmates chose to read Dispenza's work because the first chapters of The Placebo Effect scared them, I shrugged and said, " I have read worse." The semester has progressed and I got further into the book and about half way, I feel like the authors go from informative professors who can say things over your head but mainly get their point across, to the annoying guy who throws facts in your face and purposefully makes you feel like a child.

For the most part the book is good, I liked it. I just feel that not all of the featured writers were accommodating to their readers. So if you are a scholarly chap read this book, you can look forward to it's informative nature. However, if you are reading this for a class, or you're not a huge fan of "sciencey" writings, but want to know more about the placebo check out the other book I mentioned.

The placebo effect is such a fascinating subject and area of study. I think it is important that more people learn about it, and work to understand what placebo means. This book focuses on getting you to question what you believe is placebo and then taking the idea apart to put it back together again and create a new picture. As long as you can get past the information dumps. Here is the key read the conclusions the closest, if (like me) you zone in and out of the beginning of the chapters.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a really dry one, and not as informative as I'd expected (because it's a collection of articles, so there's overlap between the authors). Still it's a good guide to medical thoughts on how placebos work, or if they do, the prevailing theory being that it's close to a conditioned response brought on by getting the magic potion from the wise old healer. The consensus seems to be that it's worth studying in more detail, but unlikely to result in curing cancer by force of will or the like.

[Estelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dry book. Well then again, it's a scientific commentary kind of book. Informative? Quite but hard to understand some points in the book.