調和思想からキリスト教科学へ : 癒しの思想と技法をめぐって

Christian Science is one of the much influencial religious sects in the modern United States, especially in the field of publishing and medicine. However, there can we find only few researches about its healing practice even in the United States, and, as a matter of course, in Japan. This is a study about the transition and development of the idea and the arts of the healing from the Harmonialism to Christian Science. In harmonialism I include mesmerism, homeopathy, hydropathy, etc. Harmonialism is defined as an unorganized religious movements, which understands that a person's harmonial rapport with cosmos (or God) has much influence on his/her spiritual composure and physical health. But other than "rapport", one more important motief of harmonialism can I show you. It is the conceptions of half-materialistic fluid (for example, "spiritual matter") as the media of rapport. Many students refer to Christian'Science as one of the cases of harmonialism. Perhaps it is true to their ideas of the psychosomatic causes of diseases, but Christian Science has neither conceptions of "rapport" nor that of materialistic fluid. The materialistic conceptions of fluid changes into a metaphysical conception of "divine Mind" of Christian Science. We can show you another same change as the transition of the conception of the fluid, in that of healing arts. The commonest arts of healing of harmonialism, especially in the case of mesmerism, are "therapeutic touch" or "rubbing", which is done to transmit the fluid into the affected body organ. But in Chrisitian Science, they had no conceptions about such fluid so there are no arts to pass the fluid. These two points also show where Christian Science is to the strand of harmonialism. And my study can be some critic to the tendency of the contemporary research of faith healing, which is apt to focus only on the thought or cause of healing