Conclusion: Healing Artisans Summary and Analysis

Konner took an objective view to describe his time as a medical student but recognized he wrote subjectively from four points of view as anthropologist, educator, middle-aged husband and father. Konner also brought two years experience in Africa where he saw the essentially religious experience of healing performed by ritual healers compared to American medicine's "spiritual wasteland" and doctors with tests, drugs and scalpels. Konner is interested in psychiatry, neurology, obstetrics, gynecology and pediatrics as expressed in growth, development and behavior. His middle-aged, extensive experience gave Konner greater understanding than his peers and wisdom to express it judiciously. Since he was a university professor he had definite ideas about training and learning methods. For example, Konner saw memorized lists of facts in classrooms as ineffective as memorized decision trees in clinical settings. Specifically he criticized the huge...