Welcome
to the site of the film "STORY DOCTORS"
“How can an exchange of words heal physical conditions?”
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STORY DOCTORS
Introduction by Julie Cunningham
STORY DOCTORS is a documentary following a journey of discovery about the extraordinary outcomes that become possible when mind and body are treated as a whole.
My chance meeting on a plane with the pioneering NZ Doctor Dr Brian Broom, an immunologist and psychotherapist, professor, author and educator- opens out to a journey through New Zealand meeting ex-patients whose long standing chronic physical diseases shifted into remission after talk therapy with the “Story Doctor”. These people; the Doctor’s ex-patients, the landscape and its icons encountered along the way, form the physical backbone of the film.
In interview patients reveal how their buried emotional stories were underlying their physical conditions, in effect causing them, and how this was surprisingly uncovered though therapy with the Dr Broom.
Working with emotional story became the cornerstone of Dr Broom's approach with particular patients who had physical conditions. Although physical conditions conventionally are never treated with psychotherapy, he couldn't dismiss the indications of an unconscious emotional story being revealed through the metaphors colouring his patient's language. For instance an older woman who suffered a serious fall and consequently developing a chronic thickening of her skin speaking of going "into her shell".
As both an immunologist and a psychotherapist guided by deep care for his patients Dr Broom forged a method. He discovered a simple story based approach was easily assimilated by patients and allowed for a person to person exchange in therapy, not a top down dynamic based on theory. As equal power relations were possible a patient's tender unconscious story would unfold in a place of trust. Following that unearthing into the light of consciousness in a safe place, the condition would simply leave the person and not come back.
So it is via the journey of the film through New Zealand, meeting patients and the doctors who now work this way due to Dr Broom's educational work, that western medicine’s purely functional model of the body unaffected by consciousness is seriously brought into question. In these stories body and mind are shown to be intimately intertwined.
Animation flows into live action, collage, interview, drama and back to animation giving form to the equally present - “imaginal” * and “conceptual”* realm of memory, dream, belief and story also at play in the patients lives.
STORY DOCTORS is a being made for multiplatform viewing (TV, Web distribution and health education ) in development in Sydney, Australia.
Varied statistics in the range of 30 -60 percent -sighted for over a decade now about the emotional basis of disease creation are significant, even at the low end and call for the attention of those funding and molding health policy. If these statistics referred to a virus it would be considered a high alert epidemic! Given the creaking and overtaxed health systems of many western countries, STORY DOCTORS energetically reveals the economic and social potential in this low tech, but skillful approach to patient care where treating the whole person is central to the process.
If you know would like to help the film be produced please visit Help Make it Happen.
See The Interview with Julie for more about the film's scope and features.
Screen Design by Julie Cunningham
Site built by Encode a Canberra based company .