[The placebo phenomenon--how can it be understood?]

While previously being considered "medicine without effect", it is now well documented that placebo works. The understanding of the placebo phenomenon should start with the placebo concept and its historical use related to scientific medicine and the biomedical paradigm.

Theoretical analysis.

While scientific medicine is about causality in a domain of substances (energy), placebo works in a mental domain (information). When it works, it is as something meaningful, and not as something causal or true in an empirical sense.

Empirical studies on placebo suggest that the body cannot be sufficiently understood as a closed biological system; it should be understood as a system webbed in communication with its cultural context. Even if the paradigmatic consequences of this are challenging, the practical implications amount to no more than to give the art of medicine the status it deserves--not as an alternative to scientific medicine, bus as a necessary part of optimal treatment.