placebo

I really liked Max Shen's take on the placebo effect in this episode: https://themetagame.substack.com/p/43-max-shen-this-book-heals-chronic Paraphrasing my understanding:

Some instances of chronic pain and bodily dysfunction are trapped priors: feedback loops where the belief that something is wrong actually creates or reinforces the symptoms (John Sarno's thesis is that most back pain is like this; it's driven by muscle tension that is fundamentally of emotional origin). When this belief is itself a causal factor, removing the belief actually does fix (or help fix) the problem. It's not a fake cure, it is the necessary and correct cure.

The important thing about a placebo treatment here is that it actually shifts the patient's self-image. If you tell a religious person "we're doing a ritual that will fix your emotional problems", and they believe this should work, then it does!

Max talks about Sarno's work as an energetic transmission from a master: for his patients (and readers of his book), hearing an expert doctor say "there is nothing wrong with you", in a tone of total relaxed confidence, is sufficient to override their trapped prior.

In a sense, this is where the healing power of love comes from. To be loved is to know, deeply, that you are loveable, that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with you.