Bernie Siegel (born October 14, 1932) is an American writer and retired pediatric surgeon, who writes on the relationship between the patient and the healing process.
As described in a 1989 article in The New York Times, patients "with cancer and such other serious illnesses as AIDS and multiple sclerosis use group and individual psychotherapy, imagery exercises and dream work to try to unravel their emotional distress, which, Siegel says, strongly contributes to their physical maladies.
"[4] The ECP was created to provide resources, professional training programs and interdisciplinary retreats that help people facing the challenges of cancer and other chronic illnesses.
[3][5] In 2008, Jerome Groopman, reviewing Anne Harrington's The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine, noted that a study by David Spiegel which (Harrington wrote) appeared to support Siegel's claims that breast cancer was partly caused by emotional turmoil, and that "dramatic remissions could occur if patients simply gave up their emotional repression, without chemotherapy or radiation.
"[10] Los Angeles Times reviewer Joan Borysenko described Siegel's first book, Love, Medicine and Miracles, as "incredibly inspiring and sure to be controversial".
Describing Siegel as an "extremist" who "views cancer and nearly all diseases as psychosomatic", the review concluded that "his message distills down to one that the head may question, but in which the heart delights".
[21] Bernie Siegel appears in the 2012 film "The Cure Is", alongside Bruce H. Lipton, Joel Fuhrman, Fabrizio Mancini, Marianne Williamson, Gregg Braden, Sue Morter, Paul Chek.