Tension-Headache Books

Loker's book Migraines and Dreams realizes two revolutions in psychology and psychotherapy. First, it presents a completely new conception of migraine and a new method of interpretation of dreams. Medical people have discovered many unusual organic processes in the head that account for migraine headache, and they therefore consider headache a harmful manifestation of some organic defect or dysfunction. But they failed to expose any organic defect or dysfunction that could be held responsible for the organic processes that cause headache. Moreover, they found that (a) those processes are controlled by the cortex, which also produces thought; (b) pain sensitivity is increased again by the cortex simultaneously with the production of headache; and (c) no animal model of migraine exists. These suggest that migraine headache may be purposefully produced by the mind, which would make migraine a psychosomatic state necessitated by the higher functions of the human cortex, or mind. Psychologists, as well as medical people, view migraine headache as a harmful manifestation of some dysfunction. But they claim that it is caused by some psychological dysfunction, not an organic one. And both psychologists and medical people have failed to produce a satisfactory method of therapy of migraine based on their conception of this disorder.

Migraines and Dreams exposes the fact that these two mental products have very definite and interrelated self-protective functions. Psychotherapy consists of discovering the precise self-protective functions of the symptoms and dreams of a patient and realizing self-protection consciously so that symptoms become unneeded. This understanding makes extremely fast and effective psychotherapy possible. The book contains 50 original case histories that expose the psychogenesis, meanings, and functions of the symptoms and dreams of migraine patients and illustrates the method of psychotherapy. In opposition to this, all existing methods of therapy, which all are based on the belief that symptoms are only harmful manifestations of dysfunctions or defects, antagonize the symptoms and thereby make them all the more needed. This means that all those therapies antagonize the mind's self-protective products and fail as they should. Loker's method of psychotherapy is self-applicable.

The second revolution realized by Loker's book is his explanation and use of the method of making scientific discoveries, which is explained briefly by Isaac Newton's in his book The Principia and used by him and all other physicists. It is because psychologists ignore this method that psychology is still a primitive science with "schools" instead of theories, and there is so much suffering due to psychological, or mental, disorders. Loker's theory of migraine is only a small part of his general theory of all automatic responses, which is presented in his book Cognitive-Behavioral Cybernetics of Symptoms, Dreams, Lateralization.

I admire anyone who can actually write a book -- usually. In this case, it seems the author fails to understand the most basic principles of migraine, which is, in fact, a true neurological disease. Migraine cannot be "terminated" by following this author's advice, with or without a psychotherapist.

Migraine has nothing whatsoever to do with "automatisms created by evolution for self-protection and are controlled by your unconscious to force you to correct your certain severely self-harming behaviors." If it did, those with migraines would not continue to suffer from this debilitating disease.

The old theories of migraine personality and psychological causes of this disease were debunked many years ago. Perhaps Mr. Loker should review the medical literature of this century.