Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 18, 2001, Page 137
Book Reviews
“Therapeutic Touch”. Bela Scheiber &Carla Selby. Amherst, New York:
Prometheus Books. ISBN: 1-57392-804-6. $26 Hardcover. 300 pages.
As the smoke cleared at Ground Zero in New York, and it became depressingly obvious that
there were very few people alive there to be physically treated, a group of nurses mobilized
to help the victims anyway—not the survivors, but the dead ones.
From her perch in the Montana mountains, a retired New York University nursing professor,
Dolores Krieger, declared that the dead are not beyond help: she and other practitioners in
her healing cult of Therapeutic Touch could ―assist the victims who have met a sudden and
violent end to their lives.‖ She meant this literally. Picking names one after another from
lists of the dead, she announced, ―I am doing healing at a distance, which I do by
visualizing myself at that person‘s side and see/feel/think of myself doing Therapeutic Touch
to that person. In this I am calling upon the help of the angels of compassion and am trying
to work with them as best I can understand. My first thought is to help the person through
the terror of dying so suddenly and so horribly.‖ None of this was metaphorical, or despite
her talk of angels, have anything in common with most religious notions of prayer for the
souls of the dead.
Therapeutic Touch (TT) is an ―alternative‖ nursing practice wherein practitioners purport to
have a panacea for the medical ills of mankind. By waving their hands some two to six
inches away from a patient‘s body (yes, that‘s right, despite its name, it doesn‘t actually
involve any real touch), they claim to be able to interact with a person‘s life-force and
create a ―healing environment‖ that exceeds anything imagined by conventional scientific
medicine. Even claims for using TT to help the dead had been seen before, though in a way
more perceptible by the living than that above (the resuscitation of clinically dead
newborns).
TT is steeped in the mystery cult of Theosophy. Theosophy is the nineteenth-century
invention of Madame Helena Blavatsky which is quintessential American spiritualism, replete
with mediums (whom Theosophists call ―sensitives‖), channeled spirits (which they call
―Masters‖), Indian superstitions, Aryan myths, and swastikas. TT practice was invented in
the mid-1960‘s by two Theosophists: one was Krieger, then a doctoral candidate at NYU,
and the other was Dora Kunz, a future President of the American Theosophical Society.
The two used a typical Theosophist trick of eclectically combining disparate elements to
create a plausible, though completely specious, medical treatment. They publicly dubbed it
a ―modern‖ version of the laying on of hands, but it was actually a mixture of Buddhist
vitalism (―kharma‖), meditation (―centering‖), and Theosophical channeling
(―intentionality‖). In the early 1970‘s, they successfully introduced their creation as a
nursing practice by using Krieger‘s position at NYU (which has a nationally influential School
of Nursing), along with a name change (to TT), heaping gobs of paeans to NYU Nursing
Dean Martha Rogers and her so-called Science of Unitary Man, and a pinch of
pseudoscientific research.
For two decades following, TT quietly established itself within nursing (particularly among
academics) until, by at least the time of the early 1990‘s, it was considered part of
mainstream nursing and seemingly unassailable. Its founders had established a cult-like
following (complete with apostasy and schisms). They published books on the techniques
and extolling the health benefits of the procedure. They placed articles in nursing
publications praising the cutting-edge quality of their science. NYU began handing out
PhD‘s to what some derisively called ―Krieger‘s Krazies,‖ and these sheep-skinned acolytes
vectored out to countless other nursing schools around the country, teaching undergraduate
Book Reviews
“Therapeutic Touch”. Bela Scheiber &Carla Selby. Amherst, New York:
Prometheus Books. ISBN: 1-57392-804-6. $26 Hardcover. 300 pages.
As the smoke cleared at Ground Zero in New York, and it became depressingly obvious that
there were very few people alive there to be physically treated, a group of nurses mobilized
to help the victims anyway—not the survivors, but the dead ones.
From her perch in the Montana mountains, a retired New York University nursing professor,
Dolores Krieger, declared that the dead are not beyond help: she and other practitioners in
her healing cult of Therapeutic Touch could ―assist the victims who have met a sudden and
violent end to their lives.‖ She meant this literally. Picking names one after another from
lists of the dead, she announced, ―I am doing healing at a distance, which I do by
visualizing myself at that person‘s side and see/feel/think of myself doing Therapeutic Touch
to that person. In this I am calling upon the help of the angels of compassion and am trying
to work with them as best I can understand. My first thought is to help the person through
the terror of dying so suddenly and so horribly.‖ None of this was metaphorical, or despite
her talk of angels, have anything in common with most religious notions of prayer for the
souls of the dead.
Therapeutic Touch (TT) is an ―alternative‖ nursing practice wherein practitioners purport to
have a panacea for the medical ills of mankind. By waving their hands some two to six
inches away from a patient‘s body (yes, that‘s right, despite its name, it doesn‘t actually
involve any real touch), they claim to be able to interact with a person‘s life-force and
create a ―healing environment‖ that exceeds anything imagined by conventional scientific
medicine. Even claims for using TT to help the dead had been seen before, though in a way
more perceptible by the living than that above (the resuscitation of clinically dead
newborns).
TT is steeped in the mystery cult of Theosophy. Theosophy is the nineteenth-century
invention of Madame Helena Blavatsky which is quintessential American spiritualism, replete
with mediums (whom Theosophists call ―sensitives‖), channeled spirits (which they call
―Masters‖), Indian superstitions, Aryan myths, and swastikas. TT practice was invented in
the mid-1960‘s by two Theosophists: one was Krieger, then a doctoral candidate at NYU,
and the other was Dora Kunz, a future President of the American Theosophical Society.
The two used a typical Theosophist trick of eclectically combining disparate elements to
create a plausible, though completely specious, medical treatment. They publicly dubbed it
a ―modern‖ version of the laying on of hands, but it was actually a mixture of Buddhist
vitalism (―kharma‖), meditation (―centering‖), and Theosophical channeling
(―intentionality‖). In the early 1970‘s, they successfully introduced their creation as a
nursing practice by using Krieger‘s position at NYU (which has a nationally influential School
of Nursing), along with a name change (to TT), heaping gobs of paeans to NYU Nursing
Dean Martha Rogers and her so-called Science of Unitary Man, and a pinch of
pseudoscientific research.
For two decades following, TT quietly established itself within nursing (particularly among
academics) until, by at least the time of the early 1990‘s, it was considered part of
mainstream nursing and seemingly unassailable. Its founders had established a cult-like
following (complete with apostasy and schisms). They published books on the techniques
and extolling the health benefits of the procedure. They placed articles in nursing
publications praising the cutting-edge quality of their science. NYU began handing out
PhD‘s to what some derisively called ―Krieger‘s Krazies,‖ and these sheep-skinned acolytes
vectored out to countless other nursing schools around the country, teaching undergraduate
