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Healing of Persons
The Swiss physician and psychiatrist views a patient as a person whose personal problems are contributing factors to physical illness
300 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
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119 people want to read
About the author
Paul Tournier
72 books103 followersPaul Tournier was a Swiss physician and author who had acquired a worldwide audience for his work in pastoral counselling. His ideas had a significant impact on the spiritual and psychosocial aspects of routine patient care, and he had been called the twentieth century's most famous Christian physician.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 11, 2019
I cannot emphasize enough how good this book is; this is a book that everybody should read, even those who don't like books, because it is about counselling and helping people who are hurting, but even so remains one of the most encouraging books I have read in a long time.
Tournier was a French Christian physician who lived in the early twentieth century, and did serious study of people and very much gave himself for other people without becoming frantic or worn out, as this book makes clear. In a day where it's popular to talk about giving oneself for others, I loved Tournier's emphasis on meditation and prayer; his meditation is not the self-care placebo, but is rooted in examining oneself for sin and in the deep need that we humans have to know Jesus Christ.
That is what makes this book so good and so valuable that I would assign it to anybody: his whole theory about "counselling" and "healing persons" is that people need to consecrate themselves to Jesus Christ. This is not a shallow consecration of the revivalistic sort, where one "resolves" to be good, to start up a new lifestyle, or any of the other million devices that we modern Christians pride ourselves on, but simple obedience in our day-to-day life, guarded with prayer.
He's also a balanced doctor. You can get a lot of the best of the Nouthetic counselling (confession of sin, the connection of physical health to moral health, the emphasis on patience and contentment in suffering, the need for Jesus to be at the center) without the common excesses (denial of common grace, reduction of all psychological issues to sin, etc). For instance, Tournier mentions Freud and other modern psychologists and finds that Freud's emphasis on sex is oversensationalized and a lot of what Freud was actually up to had to do with sin. Thus Tournier is willing to talk about disorders that are the result of bad upbringing, and he is very concerned that people not use Christianity as a way of escaping the other problems in their life (he has a great chapter on realism at the end of the book that warns against this, which I suppose would be the great Freudian challenge). He tells people that they need to accept their spouse as they are, not as they wish they were. He talks about the pressures and expectations that society puts on us without overdoing it, and indeed recognizing the ways we sinfully respond or react to those expectations. There are mounds of good advice in this book.
There are some flaws: he perhaps gave to much credence to the four medieval personality types and to the idea that the artist was unjustly suppressed by modernity, but he had something that modern Evangelical counselling badly needs: gravitas. One reads his books and is struck with a gentleness and kindness that is not the weepy, sentimental modern or the harsh, clean up your act, son, of the opposite. He is a man who recognizes that there are hard things and that people need to be taught how to deal with them, and that the best way to do so is simply to submit to Jesus Christ and to accept life.
For all these reasons, I highly commend that you go and buy a used copy on amazon. It's a great book, and the stories that he tells about the ways God used him and the people he healed will leave you not so much crying, but encouraged at how God truly can and does still heal people.
Tournier was a French Christian physician who lived in the early twentieth century, and did serious study of people and very much gave himself for other people without becoming frantic or worn out, as this book makes clear. In a day where it's popular to talk about giving oneself for others, I loved Tournier's emphasis on meditation and prayer; his meditation is not the self-care placebo, but is rooted in examining oneself for sin and in the deep need that we humans have to know Jesus Christ.
That is what makes this book so good and so valuable that I would assign it to anybody: his whole theory about "counselling" and "healing persons" is that people need to consecrate themselves to Jesus Christ. This is not a shallow consecration of the revivalistic sort, where one "resolves" to be good, to start up a new lifestyle, or any of the other million devices that we modern Christians pride ourselves on, but simple obedience in our day-to-day life, guarded with prayer.
He's also a balanced doctor. You can get a lot of the best of the Nouthetic counselling (confession of sin, the connection of physical health to moral health, the emphasis on patience and contentment in suffering, the need for Jesus to be at the center) without the common excesses (denial of common grace, reduction of all psychological issues to sin, etc). For instance, Tournier mentions Freud and other modern psychologists and finds that Freud's emphasis on sex is oversensationalized and a lot of what Freud was actually up to had to do with sin. Thus Tournier is willing to talk about disorders that are the result of bad upbringing, and he is very concerned that people not use Christianity as a way of escaping the other problems in their life (he has a great chapter on realism at the end of the book that warns against this, which I suppose would be the great Freudian challenge). He tells people that they need to accept their spouse as they are, not as they wish they were. He talks about the pressures and expectations that society puts on us without overdoing it, and indeed recognizing the ways we sinfully respond or react to those expectations. There are mounds of good advice in this book.
There are some flaws: he perhaps gave to much credence to the four medieval personality types and to the idea that the artist was unjustly suppressed by modernity, but he had something that modern Evangelical counselling badly needs: gravitas. One reads his books and is struck with a gentleness and kindness that is not the weepy, sentimental modern or the harsh, clean up your act, son, of the opposite. He is a man who recognizes that there are hard things and that people need to be taught how to deal with them, and that the best way to do so is simply to submit to Jesus Christ and to accept life.
For all these reasons, I highly commend that you go and buy a used copy on amazon. It's a great book, and the stories that he tells about the ways God used him and the people he healed will leave you not so much crying, but encouraged at how God truly can and does still heal people.
November 12, 2025
Glad I happened upon this at Goodwill and recognized the author because parts of this were incredible! The gist is that we are whole people, body, mind, emotions, etc., and they are all interconnected. Doctors treat physical symptoms when often they stem, at root, from something psychological or otherwise. Best chapter was the one on suffering: absolutely five stars.
November 21, 2018
I was fairly disappointed in this book, as everything I have read by Tournier thus far has been very stimulating and thought-provoking. This one, well, it hasn't aged well. Bear in mind that I chose to put the book down after only getting a third of the way through.
Compared to Tournier's other book, this one is more focused on his medical work than previous books. He refers throughout the book to many of his patients, with the basic premise that your physical health is largely tied to your mental and spiritual health. Taken in some extreme cases, arguing that if you are sinning, you are more likely to be less healthy and develop all sorts of neuroses and physical ailments e.g. a diabetic patient of his is diabetic because (Tournier asserts) the man was embezzling money at work. A lot of this would be considered very shoddy work today, and largely speculation and pseudoscience. I ended up having to put the book down when Tournier was advocating for re-vitalizing the theory of the four humors, Hippocrates' earliest personality survey dividing humanity up into choleric (action), melancholic (thought), sanguine (physical activity) and lymphatic (patience), or something along those lines. He asserted that the perfect male is CMSL, and from what I could tell, he was strongly biased towards the C personality type. When men aren't choleric first, then all sorts of unhealthy effects start cropping up. Hmm. Nope. I usually write down great quotes while I reading, and I hadn't written down a single one.
Maybe it gets better, but just flipping through, well, I doubt it. Next.
Compared to Tournier's other book, this one is more focused on his medical work than previous books. He refers throughout the book to many of his patients, with the basic premise that your physical health is largely tied to your mental and spiritual health. Taken in some extreme cases, arguing that if you are sinning, you are more likely to be less healthy and develop all sorts of neuroses and physical ailments e.g. a diabetic patient of his is diabetic because (Tournier asserts) the man was embezzling money at work. A lot of this would be considered very shoddy work today, and largely speculation and pseudoscience. I ended up having to put the book down when Tournier was advocating for re-vitalizing the theory of the four humors, Hippocrates' earliest personality survey dividing humanity up into choleric (action), melancholic (thought), sanguine (physical activity) and lymphatic (patience), or something along those lines. He asserted that the perfect male is CMSL, and from what I could tell, he was strongly biased towards the C personality type. When men aren't choleric first, then all sorts of unhealthy effects start cropping up. Hmm. Nope. I usually write down great quotes while I reading, and I hadn't written down a single one.
Maybe it gets better, but just flipping through, well, I doubt it. Next.
April 15, 2018
I read this book at the end of college when I was seeking my direction in life. While reading Tournier’s depiction of the union of Medicine and the spiritual of Dialogue I felt drawn into Medicine, like a Divine call. I have been practicing now for 30 years. I still have not arrived at the place to which Tournier directs us, but I see it now more clearly, through life lived day by day pressing towards compassion and truly caring for and about people, especially those most vulnerable. Young person, read it at your own risk—You too may encounter something greater than yourself, the inscrutable, the irresistible, the revolutionary.
October 11, 2024
This is a review of the 1967 Good News Publishers paperback edition, which I found in my Mom's personal library. This is condensed from a longer book of the same title. This was torture enough. Only a masochist would enjoy reading anything longer.
Paul Tournier was a real doctor in Switzerland, so he should've known better than to write this pile of nuclear waste. He starts off warning against Christian Science ... and then proceeds to write a book no better than anything published by Christian Scientists.
His basic premise is that it's your own fault you got sick, or some sort of moral failure. Here's an example from page 10. An eighty-six year old woman had a heart attack and accidentally overdosed on the digitalis she was given by a "Poor Law doctor." Tournier changed her medicine, then asked her if there was "some moral factor behind her heart attack."
She replied that she had the heart attack after her cat was murdered.
So, Tournier then goes on to blame HER for her heart problems, since she shouldn't let anything upset her so.
Nothing about sympathy for her killed cat, about finding justice ... no, that would make too much sense to Tournier.
People with near death experiences, or who have been revived from loss of oxygen, often report hallucinations, such as traveling through a tunnel of light (this tunnel is from lack of oxygen.) It is theorized that when we die, we have a hallucination that seems to stretch out forever.
Tournier died in 1986. Hopefully, his final hallucination is one of unending, excruciating pain, delivered by all of the patients he tortured and readers he lied to. My Mom wouldn't be there, since she's still in a half-life, confined to her bed, in more or less constant pain that no doctor or priest or books of this rot can help.
God can heal. Suffering is a blessing.
Fuck that.
Paul Tournier was a real doctor in Switzerland, so he should've known better than to write this pile of nuclear waste. He starts off warning against Christian Science ... and then proceeds to write a book no better than anything published by Christian Scientists.
His basic premise is that it's your own fault you got sick, or some sort of moral failure. Here's an example from page 10. An eighty-six year old woman had a heart attack and accidentally overdosed on the digitalis she was given by a "Poor Law doctor." Tournier changed her medicine, then asked her if there was "some moral factor behind her heart attack."
She replied that she had the heart attack after her cat was murdered.
So, Tournier then goes on to blame HER for her heart problems, since she shouldn't let anything upset her so.
Nothing about sympathy for her killed cat, about finding justice ... no, that would make too much sense to Tournier.
People with near death experiences, or who have been revived from loss of oxygen, often report hallucinations, such as traveling through a tunnel of light (this tunnel is from lack of oxygen.) It is theorized that when we die, we have a hallucination that seems to stretch out forever.
Tournier died in 1986. Hopefully, his final hallucination is one of unending, excruciating pain, delivered by all of the patients he tortured and readers he lied to. My Mom wouldn't be there, since she's still in a half-life, confined to her bed, in more or less constant pain that no doctor or priest or books of this rot can help.
God can heal. Suffering is a blessing.
Fuck that.
November 24, 2017
I appreciate the way Tournier honestly looks at the connection between body, mind, and soul in the healing of persons. Those of us in the medical, psychological, and pastoral roles are on the same team.
January 25, 2020
An excellent overall review has already been written here* so I will only make a comment upon something valuable I learned as someone going into medicine. I remember someone once commenting that there are not separate sets of virtues for each role we put on or task we undertake. Books on "parenting advice" or books geared for "women" can go sideways when they get this wrong. At the end of the day, to be a good “Christian husband” is to be a good Christian. The specific applications are rarely as mysterious as we make them out to be.
Tournier shows skillfully that the same thing applies to the role of a physician. To be a good “Christian physician” is to be a good Christian. Of course, we need to learn something about science and psychology, but the fundamental set of virtues we must cultivate, both within ourselves as Christians and in our functioning as doctors are identical to each other.
* https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Tournier shows skillfully that the same thing applies to the role of a physician. To be a good “Christian physician” is to be a good Christian. Of course, we need to learn something about science and psychology, but the fundamental set of virtues we must cultivate, both within ourselves as Christians and in our functioning as doctors are identical to each other.
* https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews