Formal errors in non-pharmaceutical medicine (CAM): clinical medicine, mind-body medicine, body-psychotherapy, holistic medicine, clinical holistic medicine and sexology.

This paper identifies five formal errors in non-drug medicine including most types of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). These are based on five central principles of healing from the curriculum of the EU master in complementary, psychosocial and integrated health sciences (EU-MSc-CAM) from the Interuniversity College in Graz, Austria. An error is defined, as a therapeutic intervention that judged from established scientific knowledge should have been done differently. We found formal errors regarding: 1) The principle of salutogenesis, 2) The principle of similarity, 3) The principle that healing happens in surplus of resources, 4) The principle of using as little force as possible (primum non nocere), 5) The Hering's law of cure (you will get well in the opposite order of the way you got ill). From the primary errors secondary errors can be identified: A) Focusing on the patient's consciousness instead of the patient's unconscious, B) Wasting time on taking anamnesis and giving diagnoses, C) To ignore that the therapy does not help, D) Not to refer a patient that you know cannot be helped by you, E) Not to observe that a close relationship does not develop between therapist and patient, F) To work on a patient that you are not competent to help, G) Not to support the development of the patient into an independent person, H) Not letting go of the patient. None of the errors caused harm to the patient but slowed down healing. The presented list of errors is ideal for training and supervision.