Consumers can be demanding, and manufacturers are rushing to meet those demands. The Cocktail has become the elixir, the Grail, of the Positive Lifestyle. All medicines have a sacramental component and drug consumption is almost always ritualistic. And any medicine endowed with the magical rejuvenating properties claimed for the Cocktail will also engender a powerful placebo effect. But illness is not the only phenomenon to be affected by mass trance and group-fantasy.
Recovery is also susceptible to the same shared mental factors.
Attitudes to sickness and disability are easily affected by the unconscious wishes, beliefs and fantasies of patients, physicians, care-givers and social groups. During the 1970's and 1980's, a breakthrough in communicating with autistic and severely retarded people was widely heralded. Application of a simple new technique known as Facilitated Communication resulted in people who had never communicated before suddenly revealing complex, sophisticated thoughts, and revealing them in well written sentences and paragraphs. Acceptance of FC spread rapidly as parents and teachers welcomed a technique that allowed them, for the first time, to enjoy communicating with their children. Then something ominous began to happen.