Battino's main focus in this book is on healing using mind/body communication through guided imagery. Not only does Battino provide a whole host of scientific evidence for the benefits of guided imagery for those who have life-challenging illness but he also analyses, in detail, the importance of the language used in several guided imagery scripts. He explores a number of other therapies, such as psychotherapy based approaches to illness and includes contributions from other writers on nutrition and Native American healing.

My only real argument with this excellent book is its title: it doesn't indicate the topic.

The book is about cancer. It gives the author's impressive experience in working with people suffering from an advanced stage of cancer, but is a lot more than that. There are well-documented and easy to understand accounts of psychoneuroimmunology, some of the uses of guided imagery with excellent examples, the uses and dangers of the placebo effect, a Native American healer's approach, and so on. It is a useful, highly readable compendium of psychological approaches to healing.

Early in the book, Battino makes a very useful distinction between healing and curing. Curing is when the disease goes away. A person who has healed becomes whole again, and can be at peace with the disease, and the world at large. “Remarkably, although healing is an end in itself, healing is often accompanied by some degree of curing, if not complete cures, with sufficient frequency to be taken seriously. The goal of healing work is not a cure ” the cure is a by-product of healing. In fact, if the sole motivation for healing work is a cure, then the healing work becomes contaminated and side-tracked.”

This describes my approach to a wide range of physical problems, and the definition both validated and inspired me.

Properly, Battino reports extensively on the work of several relevant approaches, for example the work of Bernie Siegel and Milton Erickson. I felt a little dubious about the use of claims from neuro-linguistic programming. My understanding of the evidence is that this approach, promising and interesting as it is, has failed to stand up under cross-validation.

Even with such a minor cavil, this is an excellent book. It will be useful to anyone dealing with psychological approaches to physical ailments, particularly to serious ones like cancer. It will be useful to anyone who wants to improve their use of guided imagery for a wide range of purposes, such as for example dealing with pain management, grief or anxiety. It will be useful to anyone who wishes to gain an understanding of the subtle interactions of thinking and imaging with the actions of the immune system.