the willing suspension of disbelief

 

If you enjoy reading fiction, you know how careful the author must be to include details that make the story believable. He has to create realistic characters. He has to build a world that you, as the reader, can visualize and understand. What happens there must be consistent and plausible given the story line. Even so, he may be asking you to suspend disbelief...to accept the fact that dinosaurs can coexist with astronauts, for example, or that extinct creatures can come back to life, or that his hero's superpower is mental telepathy.

"A piece of writing has to seduce the reader.

It has to suspend disbelief and

earn the reader's trust."

~ Po Bronson~

On the other hand, nonfiction writers need to focus on the facts and communicate them with accuracy and clarity. Interestingly, this may also require the reader to suspend disbelief, especially if the writer is presenting new discoveries that challenge the old...for example, recent observations and speculation about the immensity and complexity of the cosmos. How viruses mutate. How we can hear a multiplicity of sounds, including each one's volume and pitch, how we discern harmony and melody, and how they can evoke emotion or change your mood...all at the same time. Beautiful music. An approaching storm. A childhood lullaby. When you pause to think about it, it's hard to imagine. In fact, it's hard to believe much of what we are learning about how the human body functions. And how it heals.

Advances in modern medical technology have made it possible for us to observe and to understand, for the first time, how the human body takes care of itself. How it fights off infection. How a bruise just fades away. How a broken bone heals. The fact that a patient recovers after a heart attack or a stroke is enough to challenge anyone's concept of reality. Still, that's the easy part.

"The body is a remarkable mystery, 

capable of untold feats 

of self-preservation and healing."

~J. Upledger~

Every day we learn more about how the body sustains and heals itself without any conscious awareness, attention, or effort on our part. Meaning that much of what the body does to keep itself healthy, and much of what it takes to heal, is under subconscious control.

We have long recognized the "placebo effect." This is observed when, unbeknownst to the patient, he is "prescribed" a sugar pill by his physician, but he recovers just as he would had he been given s proven drug. This is believed to happen because the patient trusts his doctor, and he believes he is getting a real medication that is known to work for his condition. He expects to get better. In other words, healing depends on the patient's conscious beliefs about it.

"Your body's ability to heal is greater

than anyone has permitted you to believe."

~Attribution unknown~

And then there's this: Diabetes has subsided and skin lesions have disappeared under hypnosis, suggesting there is an unconscious component to healing. This has been shown to correlate with the patient's belief that healing is occurring because of the hypnotic suggestion that it is. Just the thought of it.

And this: Patients with Multiple Personality Disorder have been observed to change not only their voices and mannerisms as they morph into different personalities, but to change their eye color as well. Scars observed in one personality can disappear as another personality emerges. This is accompanied by changes in their EEG, suggesting that the mind is intrinsically involved in the transformations that are observed.

We don't yet know how that happens, but in medicine, as in writing, it requires the willing suspension of disbelief to even imagine it.

"It is now life and not art

that requires the willing suspension

of disbelief."

~Po Bronson~

jan