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tissues or organs, but a state of multidimensional experience,
according to this perspective. The mind, body & environment are
in a state of dynamic interaction & the maintenance of this interaction
in an optimum state of efficiency is what health means. In other
words ” To be healthy is to have the ability to live with full
use of our faculties and be vigorous, alert & happy to be alive,
even in old age, despite an occasional bout of illness.” This
” operational health” has been defined as wellness. It is a sense
of all-round well-being as contrasted with illness. .
The greatest aspect of holistic health is its recognition of the
role played by mind in health. ” Mind is omnipotent ” said
Freud & he had shown that the Unconscious played a key role
in causing certain diseases which came to be described as
psychosomatic diseases. He looked upon the Unconscious
chiefly as the repository of negative emotions. His early disciple
Carl Jung expanded the concept of the Unconscious to make
it include good emotions and even spiritual urges. Adler,
another disciple of Freud showed that the ego could alter
unconscious behaviour.
The connecting link between the body and mind was not clear. The
work of the Canadian endocrinologist Hans Selye brought the much
needed connecting link. In his classic work ” The Stress of Life “
Selye showed that mental stress was the root cause of several types
of common illness such as hypertension, hyperacidity etc. The
‘stressor’ (the