The redefinition of the situation: the social construction of spiritual healing experiences.

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Abstract
This paper is based on interviews with 160 persons who were participants in spiritual healing groups in Baltimore between 1981 and 1983. Survey data are used to describe how participants in spiritual healing groups presented their health problems, and how and if these problems were resolved or 'healed' over a six‐month period. The majority of respondents claimed some degree of healing, associated mainly with symptom alleviation rather than cure. A process of health problem redefinition occurred among some respondents, that provided better 'fit' with outcome descriptions of healing than original problem formulations. Redefined health problems were often less serious, less medical, more chronic, and more 'emergent' than those initially defined, and respondents who redefined problems were significantly more likely to claim a healing experience. 'Psychologisation' of problems suggest that healing experiences can be conceived as socially constructed events.

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