In 1957 a guy by the name of Mr Wright provided possibly the most amazing story when it comes to the power of belief, the medical world has ever known.
There are some incredible stories about people having complete belief in themselves and pushing through to amazing heights in spite of the good opinion, and often ridicule, from others.
Roger Bannister didn’t allow the medical profession stop him running a sub 4-minute mile even though they insisted his lungs may explode and he would certainly die.
Walt Disney ignored people and the 102 banks that told him building Disney World on a swamp was a less than stellar idea.
And Gandhi didn’t listen to those people who thought the only way to usurp the evil British Empire was through violence.
And of course I could go on and on because there are literally thousands of such examples.
A Different Kind of Belief
But Mr Wrights story was somewhat different.
Bannister a doctor himself saw no medical basis for what he was being told. Disney had a vision propelled by the advent of the automobile and the growing ability of people to travel. And Gandhi had the foresight to realize the British couldn’t withstand full blown civil disobedience by such a huge mass of people.
All were amazing, but in retrospect all make sense as do many such stories. These people weren’t just believers, they were visionaries and implementers.
Even to this day though Mr Wrights story is part of medical folklore.
Wright’s body was riddled with lymph node cancer to the point where it was breaking through his skin all over his body and he was given a matter of days to live.
In his desperation he sought the services of a Dr Klopfer who was doing research into a brand new cancer treatment called krebiozen, and hoped he could help him.
Dr Klopfer knew that the new drug was almostcertainly useless for somebody with end stage cancer and refused to admit him into the trails.
Wright didn’t give up though and insisted he be treated. After much back and forth Klopfer relented, more for a quiet life than because any good the trial drug could do for somebody in his situation.
So he brought him in on a Friday and treated him intravenously before then leaving for the weekend sure that Wright would be dead by the time he returned to work on Monday.
But Wright was far from dead, in fact his symptoms were markedly improved. All the swelling on his skin had all but disappeared and he felt much better and stronger.
Klopfer was stunned because it wasn’t known if the drug even worked yet as it was still in its trial stages and not one of the other trial participants had shown any sign of improvement.
Nonetheless, after a period of evaluation Wright was sent home a few days later leaving Klopfer mystified.
Two months later Wright returned to the hospital as his cancer had aggressively returned. He once again asked Klopfer to give him the new wonder drug, but this time Klopfer did something very clever.
Knowing that the drug looked for all intents and purposes like a lost cause, he placed Wright into the Placebo Group to see what would happen, injecting him with saline rather than krebiozen.
Once again Wrights cancer retreated and he started to recover as before much to the astonishment of everybody involved in the trial.
Two weeks later things went wrong. The American Medical Association released the results of the trial effectively saying the drug was worthless and trials were being halted.
Two days later and aware of the news, Wright was back at the hospital his cancer running rampant. A few days after that he was dead.
Wayne Dyer And Some Dodgy Knees
Wayne Dyer tells a story in one of his books, (actually it’s probably in all his books because they all seem to be the same to me, but that’s another matter) about another amazing medical story.
This case involved people with knee pain and the efforts of doctors to find out if a procedure that was common place at the time was actually effective.
They set up a trial in which one group of sufferers had the real operation. Another had the knee cleaned out with saline and the final group merely had a small incision where the surgeon would have cut. Of course there was also a control group of people who went operationless.
Shortly after the knee procedures and going through rehabilitation all patients reported a similar yet significant lessening of pain, irrespective of which group they were in.
That’s where Wayneyboy leaves the story, and why not? Because that’s amazing, will get any crowd of elderly women whipped into a frenzy of belief and probably sell a few more books.
It also goes to ‘prove’ what Dyer regularly says and that is “if you believe it, you can have it”. And let’s face it, even Gurus like to be proved right.
The slight problem is though, that like Wright, the improvement was only temporary and the patients who had undergone the sham operation (something that is now highly illegal by the way) soon returned to hobbling around like the old dude with the long beard in The Simpsons.
I have no idea if Dyer knows this, and even if he does I understand his desire to drive home the point in an attempt to improve peoples belief system.
But if he does know, is it right? Is it ethical to hold information back that undermines the point you are trying to make?
Do You Believe Written Goals Are More Likely To Be Hit?
There was an experiment done at Yale Universities in the early 1950’s regarding written goal setting. The researchers tracked the progress of 100 students, 3 of whom had written goals and 97 who were too busy out partying to bother.
10 years later when the researchers returned to question the subjects, the 3% had outperformed the 97% combined on every major parameter, except presumably drinking ability.
If there were ever any doubts that written goals were paramount, then this report banished them.
There was one slight drawback though. The research never happened, it’s a self development urban myth
I’ve heard many of self-developments old guard quote this study. Brain Tracey never tires of it and apparently when he was told by somebody that it never took place supposedly responded with:
“Well it should have” And continued to use the story when addressing audiences.
Again I get Tracy’s point that he wants to get people to believe, and I’m sure it’s well intentioned.
I happen to think written goals can help (although latest research casts some doubt on that, certainly for certain types of people) but don’t we have a duty of care to deliver honest information as best we can?
Something A Bit Odd
I’m sure you were amazed and maybe even inspired by the story of Mr Wright, but did anything strike you as odd?
It happened over 50 years ago.
Since then tens (probably 100′s) of millions of people have contracted cancer and there has been no verified and documented proof of anything quite like Wrights case in the Western World.
Sure people have recovered from stage 4 cancer when all hope was lost, and I’m sure a lot are convinced they believed themselves back to health.
However, millions have died even though they truly believed they would beat their condition, so it can’t be just down to belief.
Belief Is An Amazing Thing
Here’s my take on the power of belief.
Forget what Wayne Dyer says, you cannot have anything you want just as long as you believe in it fervently enough. Dyer is just promoting false hope to people desperate to lap it up.
However, beliefs are mind-blowingly powerful and having a strong belief system is a huge benefit to you.
Here’s the reality of the situation.
Correction, here’s my reality of the situation.
The human brain and mind are capable of way more that we can possibly imagine at this time. I happen to think self-healing is possible, I just don’t think we have evolved that far yet to know how to tap into it.
I was reminded of that this week with the untimely death of Debbie Ford from cancer. Much of her material was published on Hay House and founder Louise Hay is well known for her book “You Can Heal Your Life”, which she wrote after herself beating cancer.
Leaving aside I thought the book was the biggest load of nonsensical gibberish since I tried to read the Chinese version of How To Be Rich and Happy, couldn’t Hay have helped out one of her stalwarts?
Has Hay Stumbled Onto The Cure For Something Thousands of Scientists Can’t Fathom Out?
If she actually knew how to cure cancer, wouldn’t she use that information?
Or did she just get lucky and drew a bunch of conclusions based on her circumstances and her recovery and decided to write a book about it?
Again I believe her intentions are good, but my concern is too many people (and I know this from my wife) are turning to this kind of thing and dying because of it.
If you have cancer you definitely want to believe recovery is possible no matter what the odds.
But shunning medical advice because a book tells you that it’s a blockage in your colon caused by some unresolved guilt from the time you imagined humping your local Preacher when you were 16, isn’t helpful.
Let me reiterate, I’m not saying that belief isn’t critical, because it is. I’m not saying self-healing isn’t possible because it maybe is, and I’m not even dismissing the possibility that manifestation is possible – I simply don’t know.
But what I am saying is nobody knows for certain. I don’t care who they are, what letters they have after their name or how many books they have written, they are simply offering an opinion.
If and when science swings behind these beliefs (and I’m not ruling that out) based on evidence rather than conjecture and anecdotal evidence I shall change my tune.
Until then I’ll try and tell people what we know about the power of beliefs, not what we hope.
Sure an unfortunate side-effect of that maybe that I dent some peoples confidence, but if that means they see an oncologist for their cancer rather than a Witchdoctor, then I’m cool with that.
Hi I like this article – probably b/c it lines up with both my beliefs and my life experiences.
That’ll usually do it A.M.
Hi, stumbled upon your site with the Robin Sharma comments and top 20 books and enjoying your take on interesting subjects. I appreciate you valuing honesty over marketing – or honesty as marketing? Either way, striving to be authentic is powerful and bloody difficult, respect.
For me it is not clear how much power beliefs actually have, and how much of these stories is marketing and how much is legit? – I do think beliefs are powerful however.
I also think an important distinction is that not all beliefs are created equal. I come from a Neuro-Semantics/NLP background and the models we work from describe how beliefs operate in hierarchies and layers. So how this may fit with your interesting article is that, in certain cases a strongly held belief, with no contradictory beliefs that would limit its power, could have been a significant contributing factor to recovery – and in other cases where even a belief affirmed thousands of times was just cancelled out by a stronger negative belief, and in that scenario there was no mental influence on a physical problem or sickness.
We all guessing, however considering the idea that not all beliefs are equal and the effect of beliefs could be a sliding continuum based on how “balanced” the negative and positive beliefs are that related to the same subject for me provides a different perspective to try to understand what may be going on.
Looking forward to reading more.
Tim, my background is NLP too.
You make an interesting point and I don’t disagree with what you’re saying.
The point I’m trying to drive home though is we need more than just belief, we need to act, to implement and sometimes to get help!
I love the story about a family man visualising a well cut beautifully looked after back yard. Every day he visualised in great detail what it would like, sound and smell like, and after one month was disheartened to see that his garden had become an overgrown mess. He went to complain to his guru about how visualizing didnt work – and was surprised to receive the answer – “What did you think the grass was going to cut itself? What stopped you from cutting it?” I would love to give credit to whom I first heard the story from, it might just have been a combination of stories – nevertheless a cool message.
Believing without taking action is daydreaming. If we dont know how – someone else does, if we dont start today – when will we? I agree with your point. Thanks for a great resource.
And I think we are in complete agreement!
Well put Tim. Well put. And maybe the most important point, I definitely agree that despite the power of beliefs, it’s not better to go with that and try to beat cancer, methods only backed up with anectodal references (or fake solutions) rather than medical treatments.
I do like some of Wayne Dyer’s opinions though. I can’t remember what right though now (haha!).
I actually don’t dislike Dyer, I just got get on board with the methods he sometimes uses.
Hear, hear!
These types of examples show why certain spiritual/religious beliefs are not merely benign comfort blankets, they can sometimes be downright dangerous and harmful.
Yes, science isn’t perfect, but it’s the best system we have for determining what works and what doesn’t.
Louise Hay can fuck right off.
Not a Louise Hay fan then? ;-)
@science kid
“Belief…is the insistence that the truth is what one would ‘lief’ or (will or) wish to be… Belief is fervent hope, and thus a cover-up for doubt and uncertainty.
Faith is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown.
Belief clings, but faith let’s go…faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception. If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go.
To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.” ― Alan Wilson Watts
I wrote a book on religious beliefs and how brain washing and indoctrinating children maims and cripples, but I chose to burn manuscript rather than publishing it, when the last well intended religious zealot who abused me died last year.
I personally think Louise Hay has added a lot of value to a lot of people, so too I believe has Wayne Dyer. I don’t think everything they say/write is valuable, however I choose which ideas, concepts or techniques to invest some time into and leave the rest.
In personal development it can be a challenge to separate the sincere from the sincerely marketed, so for me its more useful to consider things from two perspectives: Does it work? or Does it make sense? If it works and doesn’t make sense – the gap is mine in understanding and attitude and if it doesn’t work, but makes sense – the gap is in execution. Any case study on curing cancer and other significant health issues can provide insights and ideas which others can borrow from – however to think their is a one size fits all solution and to promote a one size fits all solution for me is not useful.
I personally believe enhancing positive beliefs and removing limiting beliefs can play a massive role in becoming more healthy-however the tools of affirmations and positive visualization aren’t always sufficient to do that. There is some unbelievable healing work been done by people like Dr Alexander Loyd, Karl Dawson, Sharon King, Robert Smith and many others. (Who I havent spent as much time using their techniques or philosophies so I cant speak for them directly)
I think beliefs are incredibly important, however they need to partner with action to maximize their potential positive contribution, and for me in health terms some of those actions will be: Becomming an expert on what is scientifically known and not know about your condition, partnering with your medical professionals, getting fit/strong (if relevant), eating right, and spending the hours to fully utlise your customised mental/healing techniques etc
You speak a lot of sense, Tim. Cheers.
My strong dislike for Louise Hay stems from the fact that she blatantly made shit up that misleads people and in some cases will cause them to eschew modern medicine which might actually save their lives (as in the example Mr B gave).
Headache = problem with guilt from your past? (I’m making this up, but it’s kinda similar). Absolute bollocks. There’s no science to it, it gives people false hope and wastes their time.
IMHO, that kind of stuff undoes any amount of good she might have done otherwise.
But other than that, you do speak a lot of sense, make some good points and I agree with you. Cheers.
Yeh *that* book was probably the most troubling self development book I have ever read. I know people who love it though.
For twenty years I was very influenced by the power of positive thinking, affirmations, the law of attraction and visualization.
By mid life I became aware of the negative impact this was having on my life.
I felt overly responsible when things went wrong, What was I doing wrong?
I was so caught up in affirming the good and being grateful I failed to notice when things turned to shit.
I believe this type of thinking also had a lot to do with the GFC.
As you say, I don’t think that the harm was intentional, they, like myself, simply failed to acknowledge the dark side, the failures.
These days I prefer to stick to be more mindful.
I accept the good with the bad and feel much better for it.
Awesome words, thank you.
Good points and I have had clients who felt like you and that belief that everything is your fault can really play havoc with your self esteem.
@Priska
Thank you sister for speaking your truth. It’s my truth too.
@Tim
Thank you for providing a place and space where we can speak our truth.
We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are.
Ideas, theories and beliefs are not necessarily truths.
A belief is not an idea held by the mind; it is an idea that holds the mind.
I don’t have any words better than these:
“Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.” (Anothony Robbins)
Thank you so much for this great article .
Definitely agree with Robbins, but it does tend to suggest beliefs are all we need.
This reminds me of a story that circulated widely during some US elections. (I honestly don’t remember what they were, but they happened state by state, stretched across many days.)
There was a geeky young guy who had an amazingly high accuracy in his predictions after about 20 states. He was interviewed by tons of reporters, and widely explained how his super-accurate method was derived from techniques for predicting baseball results, and why it worked so great.
Of course, a few states later, it turns out he was just as liable to make mistakes as any other person. With thousands upon thousands of people making their predictions, there was bound to be someone who got ridiculously accurate results, just by chance. And that someone was him.
Asking him why his method was so accurate was a bit like asking someone why they won the lottery. The answer is probably “rubbing a rabbit’s paw on my left bum cheek every morning while singing the national anthem backwards”. Rathen than the correct answer – “blind luck”.
So, as much as I love “this worked for me” types of stories, I have huge amount of respect for proper scientific research. Because when we have the resources to pull off research, we get REAL results, not just stuff that is hopefully real but we’re not quite sure!
That also reminds me that in poker, you ideally need thousands of hands of experience before you can make any reasonable assessments of your ability. It’s fairly common to hear of new “genius” players who make a fortune very quickly but aren’t actually very good players and end up losing it all soon after.
And, as my statistics lecturer hammered into me, small sample sizes often lead to unreliable conclusions.
Well that’s not true at all!
I know two people who think I’m the greatest Life Coach in the world and I am perfectly comfortable with that sample sze as providing highly accurate results.
Nah, I’ve played a few dozen hands of Hold ‘Em and I already have an accurate assesment of my ability.
I’m rubbish at poker!
But yeah, small sample sizes are great fun! I remember reading some interesting statistics about towns in the US… I think it had to do with mortality rate. The statistics clearly show that all of the towns with the lowest mortality rate are small cities. From which some people draw the conclusions that the rural air and active lifestyle must clearly be good for you!
Except all the towns with the highest mortality rate… are ALSO small cities! Clearly the worse hygiene and bad access to doctors etc. is bad for your health.
Of course it simply comes down to statistics – smaller samples are much more likely to deviate from the norm, simply by random chance.
That was last year mate and the guy in question got it pretty much bang on all the way to the end and even got a #1 best seller out of it after the election.
Of course it may still be dumb luck.
Again I’m going on memory but I *think* he used the same approach as that used in Moneyball, which is where you get the Baseball analogy.
Great movie by the way.
I’m pretty sure it was several years back, and it was baseball. I guess something similar happened again?
Those darn meddling kids these days!
Yeh that’s what I meant. He originally made his name using this approach for the Dodgers back in the early 90′s. The film Moneyball was based on him.
Unless there are 2 different stories circulating.
Belief are always remaining as the same until unless, we really believe. I truly believe that beliefs has the power!
Yes..I think!
I think you’d be huge in the personal development space, Tim, if you said all you have to do is believe and not do the work. I’d sign up for any course you offer that offers that.
Also, I have a few friends at the American Bar Association who would like the contact info for Mr. Wright’s family. ha!
Can you imagine what the lawyers would do if they performed sham operations these days. Holy shit, the medical profession would be sued out of existence.