Beyond Medicine

The rising popularity of unconventional treatment methods in Poland, not accepted by academic medicine, prompted the author to describe and interpret the social causes of this phenomenon and its diverse effects, as well as to forecast the future of such methods. These research results are the outcome of an analysis of more than 3,500 letters sent to the Polish State TV by viewers of a two-year-long series of programs offering unconventional psychotherapy. The analysis of the material enabled sociological reconstruction of everyday lay thinking of illness, health and medicine. The book also examined the relevance of classic socio-medical theories for the study of health behaviors associated with treatments offered by healers.

Wlodzimierz Piatkowski, associate professor, Department of Medical Sociology, Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin (Poland); Founder and Head of Department of Medical Sociology, Medical University, Lublin; elected national coordinator of the European Society for Health and Medical Sociology (ESHMS) in 1990.