Dr. Hammer has used his experience as a psychotherapist and his intellectual odyssey from West to East, to extend the patterns of Oriental medicine. Just as Oriental thinkers developed their tradition from experience and the need to reframe that experience in new conditions, Hammer explores the positive and negative manifestations of human character to create fully formed pictures with which to organize our recognition of bodymind. After introducing essential concepts, the text presents the patterns of Chinese medicine in the context of the five phases. Within each phase the concepts that correspond to that phase, as well as the related organ patterns and disharmonies, are discussed in terms of psychology and psychiatry.

Behind the acupuncture, herbal remedies, and sophisticated diagnostics of Chinese medicine lies a “congenial system of healing that embodies unification of body and mind, spirit and matter, nature and man, philosophy and reality.” Hammer offers a new model for appreciating the traditional healer’s effective and profound respect for individual integrity and energetic balance, arguing that such an Eastern-influenced practice is as much a spiritual science as a physical one. Accessible to the general reader, yet a resource for the professional in any healing art, this book examines the natural energy functions of the human organism as a key to mental, emotional, and spiritual health. It elucidates the author's perspective on disease--that it is not merely an invasion from the outside, but rather a condition of an individual's failed attempt to restore balance.