The Potential to Source a Patient's Imaginative Powers in Treating Cancer: Illustrated in Three Cases

The imaginative power of a human patient has the big advantage of sourcing his/her own depth leading to first-hand experiencing. Such experiences have a potential to make a deep impact that can be instrumental to the process of healing. Successful healing is almost inevitably linked to new recognitions and perceptions, changes in attitudes or changes in lifestyle. Therapists in charge may find that they cannot exert direct control over this process but nevertheless, there is a big inherent potential to such processes as a truly complementary approach to clinical oncology.

Going by the characteristic of the matter, it seems impossible to conduct randomized trials; rather, we have to learn from the very individual experiences and try to find common traits. Hence, in this contribution, it is "just" three cases that are presented: patients with a pancreatic tumor, lung metastasis, and a colon carcinoma. Still, the same objectives of evaluation criteria as in any conventional clinical trial, namely overall survival and quality of life, are followed here. The presented cases are set against expected outcomes of the guideline-oriented therapy options.

Quality of life has improved in all three cases, expected overall survival extended in one case, the second is still to be verified. Certainly beneficially, however, is the ratio of effect to - in these cases - no negative side effects.