Ashling Guildmistress
12 years ago
Wed Oct 12 2011, 10:14pm
Ashling Guildmistress
Mage
From discussions in another theory thread, I find myself pondering over a couple of ideas of healing and what exactly that Talent - or even ability of the body in general - may involve.
I must say, all these thoughts about healing to be more than just 'the flesh' really fascinate me; this idea that that there is an element of the mind that must be considered.
Here's a scary thought:
In the real world, through science we can see that moods can be affected by certain balances of chemicals in the body. I know this is a basis of certain medicines / lifestyle plans etc. that we are currently aware of - but imagine if we are one day able to *truly* refine/ understand that 'science/ ability such that we may one day reach a stage where people could take something and just instantly feel happy/ sad/ scared - even if the 'normal' reaction to the situation would be something otherwise?
Take that a step further: theoretically - and the science is still way off in the future here (or so we hope!) - if we can suddenly influence emotions, then what's stopping us from then finding out what chemicals we generate when we have certain thoughts... and thus ultimately discovering a way to influence and ultimately lead to the ability to control and manipulate what people think.
Which does this mean but effectively to reduce our existence to a set of chemical reactions?
Let's place that idea back in Obernewtyn land where people are born with Talents that are able to do just that: influence emotion and manipulate thoughts.
Placing those talents into the concept of healing, I now finding myself wondering:
a) If someone is feeling sad / sick - could empathy be used to feel the need to 'keep on fighting?'; and then
b) Consider the placebo affect - could talents like coercion be then used to 'trick' the mind to stop feeling sad / hopeless etc. (i.e. giving up) would people then heal themselves?
Consider Elspeth - who is a powerful coercer - could the Agyllians perhaps have tapped into that power? Furthermore, if we consider the theory that Elspeth's dark killing power is actually a form of empathy... again perhaps it helps to explain why she can heal herself so rapidly?
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This all makes me wonder what Healing Talents then have... I have always thought their powers to lie with mending the flesh (sort of like what a surgeon etc. would do in our world) - and again, because there does seem to be much focus with 'affecting the mentalities of healing' (i.e. mind/ soul tampering) - because it has been said that sort of healing is unique to beasts...
So WHY is it particularly unique to beasts? - I mean after all, is human physiology *really* all that different to animals?
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Just some points for discussion :)
Now - I know that Obernewtyn is PURELY a fictional story - but then, that's one of the things I like about fiction - it doesn't go around proclaiming itself to be a truth - so in doing so, we can already go in with a 'open mind' and therefore, more open to understanding things that may actually help us to discover something about - if you like - 'real world' truths.
I think there is a lot of merit in the idea of 'healing of the mind' - the only problem is that it can be so 'wishy washy' (although to be fair, a lot of the 'hard science' that we strive to achieve for proof nowadays is not 100% replicable across all scenarios either... so we probably can't be too quick to judge ^.^)
Ashlings' guildleader
12 years ago
Wed Oct 12 2011, 11:07pm
Ashlings' guildleader
Dreamscape Artist
Excellent topic! :D
It really is hard to put your finger on what it is exactly that they do, because normally we're just told that "so-and-so is in the healers' wing" and that's the end of it :P
We do know that when a healer relieves pain using their talent, it doesn't disappear but is transferred from patient to healer (When Kella siphons pain from Elspeth at the Druid's camp in The Farseekers). So at least in the case of pain, it has to be something entirely mental rather than physical, because you can't transfer a chemical from one person to another via the mind. That would indicate that when pain is drained, it's a superficial healing, because it doesn't actually do anything for them physically. However pain is probably just a special case.
I agree that the healers probably work with the flesh somehow, Elspeth's healing of the cut on her forhead in Ashling shows that, but I think we can safely rule out the sort of thing you see mages doing in Tamora Pierce's works, where they quite literally knit bones back together, because they were unable to heal Elspeth's scarring, where as if they were able to directly influence the flesh, that should have been in their power. I think that if mending the flesh is what they are doing, then it must be some kind of directing or focusing of the body's own processes like we see white cloaks doing in the Legendsong.
I think the claim that healing of the spirit is unique to beasts is an interesting one, because Elspeth heals more effectively than any other human in the Ober Chrons and she was healed by beasts. Furthermore, in TKP, Rushton was perfectly healthy in his flesh, but his spirit was hurt and that's why his mind fled to Dragon's. I would be suspicious that such healing is not unique to beasts and that it could also apply to humans, but that the healers haven't figured that out yet because they haven't thought to try, because they're getting results without it ie; the only reason they know beasts need it is because they didn't respond to what the healers were trying originally, humans do respond, so no one has thought to try anything extra.
At the end of the Farseekers we learn that Roland is convinced that the scars of childhood injuries can not be made to disappear completely. Perhaps this is because an echo of the scar remains on the person's spirit and if the healer's thought to mend the spirits of humans, they would be able to heal old scars as well as injuries.
This would lead us in an interesting direction, because it would imply that old scars are like a less severe version of what stops the animals from healing, which could imply a high degree of separation between spirit and body in humans. I've often thought that it might be that the word Funaga doesn't translate as human, but only refers to humans. What if Funaga referred to a being who's spirit is distanced from it's body? In that case, ridding the world of Funaga wouldn't require ridding the world of humans, but brining humans closer to their spirits...which in a way, is exactly what the talents are doing...Sorry, went off topic a bit there, but I really like the direction that took me in :)
12 years ago
Wed Oct 12 2011, 11:18pm
Since these are mindpowers we are talking about, and putting together MK's idea of controlling chemical balances in the brain; I think that Healers actually enter the subject's nervous system and thus through electrical impulses direct the subject's body to heal itself by directing (for example) white blood cells to gather in a certain area and heal faster. As Kella can take away headaches and sleep, I really think she is tapping into the brain itself and manipulating chemical balances rather than flesh healing. Otherwise all forms of healing would be instantaneous, but they are not; including mental disabilities like Stephan or Rushton after his torture. And Healing can't be all that extensive either because they would have been able to teach Dragon to overcome her speech impediment.
Regarding spirit healing - I think humans have the ability, but humans at the same time are too overcome by rationality and practicality to completely go with nature as the beasts do, so they are less in touch with their spirits. On the other hand, gypsies who can see auras and especially Darius would be a more interesting category of human, because they seem to be in greater touch with nature than regular landfolk (and I wouldn't be surprised if the Sadorians had a few spiritual tricks up their sleeves).
Ashlings' guildleader
12 years ago
Thu Oct 13 2011, 12:07am
Ashlings' guildleader
Master of Obernewtyn
Indeed, great topic MK ;D. And nice ideas both of you ^^
Perhaps Healers some how tap into an others' nervous system and do physically draw the pain away. Since the sensory fibres carry electrical signals, if an empath could short circuit that system locally and reroute it to themselves, the patient wouldn't feel the pain (perhaps through induction). Perhaps at the same time they are also adding a 'coercive block' to the mind, without realising it is a coercive act, creating the longer term pain relief. That would be similar to Elf's blocking of pain where she knows it is still there but is able to 'dam' the flow.
Just removing the sensory side isn't enough though, the underlying cause has to be mended (or they would get that build up of pain like where Elf hasn't had time to heal herself). I wonder if they just physically speed up the healing processes. Our bodies are able to heal because of the physical and chemical systems built into our bodies, so the only limit to healing would be the time it normally takes to complete these processes. If healers could some how just speed up these processes and also focus the healing, they would be able to speed up the total healing. I remember they also use mental shaped probes, but maybe these probes stimulate the areas and systems directly rather than through the mind. Maybe these probes are able to push and pull cells into place.
Our scars don't heal normally, so there is no process here for healers to speed up. I guess if they understood what scars are maybe they could then work out how to fix them with their powers. If they are simply relying on the natural instructions and processes within the body, they wouldn't be able to remove scars. Or maybe it isn't all physical, and like Sian thinks, the shadow of the scar on the spirit has a significant influence.
Maybe for beasts, the focus on healing the spirit is the only need for them because they are already much better healers as they are more directly aware of their body through their closer spirit. Heal the spirit and they can do the rest. Perhaps it was just that the healers couldn't understand the naturally instructions (I'm thinking dna here) within the beasts, compared to what they know of humans and how they heal them, but that the difference in spirit of animals and humans isn't as great so healing the spirit of a beast is the more straight forward approach.
Can't wait to read some more ideas. ^^
Edit: Ahh, I see Mono had some similar ideas to me about using the nervous system while I was typing this ;D
I've not taken in fully yet what has been theorised about the Healing talent but I wanted to mention a couple of things regarding the real-world applications of chemically altering people's moods...
Don't we already do that? There's chemicals in chocolate that make us happy, as a base example. There's plenty of drugs on the market to make people feel different, prescribed or not. Nicotine both stimulates and calms.
(not condoning the use of any of these of course - except maybe chocolate :P )
And the coercive element to trick the brain into believing something - don't (some) people who want to quit smoking have hypnosis therapy that makes them believe the taste of a cigarette is awful (to the point where, out of habit they still put it in their mouth but spit it out straight away - the new 'memory' is stronger than the habit)? This is actual real-world coercion - making a mind believe something it didn't.Â
And I know this method doesn't work on everyone - but the fact that it works in any case is enough to call it a method to start with.Â
I'm not really adding to any theory here, just throwing in something i remembered from The Stone Key. Dameon explains to Wenda in Saithwood that if Darius is experiencing shock his empathy can help him. Then Dameon says that Darius is in grief, withdrawing from life rather then enduring it. He seems to know what grieves him but is unable to help (pg 214).
