No, it’s not a new type of chiropractic. Syncretism is defined as: 1. Reconciliation or fusion of differing systems of belief especially with partial success or a heterogeneous result (American Heritage College Dictionary). Is it just a nicer word for “mixing chiropractic?” We have had mixing chiropractic almost since the beginning of the profession. The reasons were and continue to be numerous, everything from making money to providing an additional needed service. But, it seems to me, that as we have more clearly defined our chiropractic objective, syncretism is replacing mixing.
There is a difference. Mixing is combining medical or therapeutic objectives and procedures with the singular chiropractic objective, correcting vertebral subluxations to enable the innate intelligence of the body to be more fully expressed. Syncretism, on the other hand, is an attempt to reconcile or fuse two differing belief systems into a successful philosophy, to create a new and different philosophy.
Every procedure is based upon a belief system. The belief system precedes the application of a procedure and usually gives rise to it. In other words, under most circumstances, thought precedes action. Now, I am sure there are many chiropractors who utilize procedures, giving little or no thought to them, or at least not basing them upon sound principles. However, it seems that more and more chiropractors are basing their actions on a new principle, one in which they have tried to combine not just the procedures of medicine and chiropractic but also the philosophies.
For all intents and purposes, procedures done in the health care community are based upon what we in chiropractic call an outside-in viewpoint or belief system. Chiropractic, on the other hand, is based upon above-down inside-out (ADIO). We recognize that the innate intelligence of the body runs the organism. We cannot improve upon its ability. The best we can do is to remove an interference to its maximum expression and since the nerve system is the major tool of its expression, we address our attention to correcting interference at the vertebral level. That is more than merely an arbitrary choice. It is based on our ADIO philosophy. It is not a choice because we are lazy and do not want to do anything else or because we are not as smart as other doctors. It is because anything else requires an expertise that we do not have and perhaps one that no one has. It is based upon the truth that the world is one of order and organization, created and continually run by an intelligence greater than us. We do not name that intelligence or creator in chiropractic, but if it is a truth and the belief of an ADIO world and life viewpoint, we cannot ignore its existence or the impact that it has upon our area of expertise. Once we have accepted that viewpoint then everything else becomes perfectly logical and reasonable.
Those who have an outside-in viewpoint of life apparently have some reasonable, rational and logical explanation for their point of view, although I cannot, for the life of me, understand it. What is not reasonable, and what we are seeing more and more is an attempt to syncretize both philosophies to form a new philosophy that will be acceptable to everyone. Perhaps it is the postmodern society that we live in that causes people to blend contradictory absolutes. We have people who have been able to syncretize the outside-in philosophy of evolution with the above-down philosophy of creation and somehow come up with “theistic evolution,” an oxymoronic term in my mind.
In the chiropractic profession we have chiropractors who somehow syncretize the outside-in approach of diagnosis with the ADIO philosophy of an innate intelligence. To determine what is normal for the body in order to determine what is abnormal, you must understand what the innate intelligence is attempting to accomplish and the limitations of our educated brain preclude the possibility of that. Yet thousands of chiropractors pretend to be able to do it every day and many of these are chiropractors who would claim to be straight.
It is one thing to have chiropractors mix “Complimentary Alternative Medical” procedures with chiropractic. It is an altogether different thing to maintain that there is a similar philosophical basis for all of these procedures to be lumped together. When governmental agencies do it, we can write it off to their ignorance about what we do as chiropractors. When chiropractors do it, it is a deliberate effort to syncretize outside-in thinking with ADIO thinking. That to me is dangerous. When people mix, and understand that they are mixing medical procedures with chiropractic, that is one thing. You can do that and understand that it is not chiropractic. I have heard many chiropractors admit to me, to themselves, and even to practice members that what they are doing to help the patient is not chiropractic. However, when it comes to syncretization, blending the beliefs or world life viewpoints, a concentrated effort is being made to create a new viewpoint to blend apparent contradicting and mutually exclusive ideas into one that will be new and acceptable to everyone. It will not work and if it could, it would water down our ADIO viewpoint so much that it would destroy it. V23n2