Therapeutic Intuition

Dear Colleagues!

What does it feel like to see someone again whom you haven’t seen for a long time? What was it like to finally meet in person again after a long time apart – or after purely “virtual” communication – when the coronavirus restrictions were eased? For many, the experience of coming together again brought joy, warmth, enrichment and vitality. It was often only at that point that you realised what you had really been missing.
Yet the consequences and challenges of this limited connectedness and perception have not disappeared from our everyday therapeutic practice. They are in fact increasing and intensifying as part of a process that has arisen with the increasing reliance on a technologised form of medicine and that has accelerated exponentially in recent years – be it through laboratory tests, imaging techniques, genetic testing, electronic records, telemedical counselling or artificial intelligence. These developments, which in their speed and complexity often transcend human dimensions, consistently lead to the elimination of the human encounter as a central part of the healing event.
The findings of anthroposophic medicine provide essential insights into the process of encounter, into the development of our abilities towards therapeutic intuition. This includes recognising the ways in which karma leads us into a relationship with each other. These dispensations of destiny, in whose “enabling space” physical, soul and spiritual development unfolds, are part of all our encounters, be they with patients, colleagues or communities, with the earthly or spiritual world.
The 2024 international annual conference of the Medical Section will address key questions: “How can we perceive what is true?” and “What concrete benefits does anthroposophical spiritual science bring to the art of healing in today’s world?”. These questions will be illuminated from many perspectives during the conference, through specialist conferences, spiritual deepening work, multiprofessional workshops, lectures, case presentations and workshop discussions.
We will additionally celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Medical Section and will highlight with special contributions the anniversaries of the Course for Young Doctors, the Special Needs Education Course and – as Rudolf Steiner’s last and most forward-looking act for the medical movement – the Pastoral Medicine Course.
We hope that the decisive contribution of anthroposophic medicine to the comprehensive challenges of our time and its inspiring power for the future can become perceptible in the conference community.

For the Section Leaders and the IKAM Council
Marion Debus, Karin Michael and Adam Blanning