Paul Tournier was a Swiss physician

Physician

A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...

 and author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

 who had acquired a worldwide audience for his work in pastoral counseling

Pastoral counseling

Pastoral counseling is a branch of counseling in which psychologically trained ministers, rabbis, priests and other persons provide therapy services...

. His ideas had a significant impact on the spiritual

Spirituality

Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...

 and psychosocial

Psychosocial

For a concept to be psychosocial means it relates to one's psychological development in, and interaction with, a social environment. The individual needs not be fully aware of this relationship with his or her environment. It was first commonly used by psychologist Erik Erikson in his stages of...

 aspects of routine patient care, and he has been called the twentieth century's most famous Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

 physician.

Life and education

Tournier was born in Geneva, Switzerland, the son of Pastor Louis Tournier and Alisabeth Ormond. His 70-year old father, who was a highly respected clergyman at St. Peter's cathedral, died two months after his birth. At the age of six he was orphaned when his mother, then 42, died from breast cancer. Afterwards Tournier and his 10-year-old sister were raised by his uncle and aunt, Mr, and Mrs, Jacques Ormond.

This painful experience had a profound effect on Tournier. He withdrew into himself and became lonely and shy. Throughout his adolescence he maintained a sense of insecurity, which he would hide behind an intellectual facade, accentuated by his mathematical success in grade school and by a Greek teacher in high school.

In 1923 Tournier received an M.D. degree at the University of Geneva

University of Geneva

The University of Geneva is a public research university located in Geneva, Switzerland.It was founded in 1559 by John Calvin, as a theological seminary and law school. It remained focused on theology until the 17th century, when it became a center for Enlightenment scholarship. In 1873, it...

. During his student years he acted as the Swiss president of the student movement Zofingia and became a Red Cross delegate for the repatriation of Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n and Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n prisoners of war in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

.

On October 4, 1924, he married Nelly Bouvier. The couple had two children. In 1984, ten years after the death of his first wife, he married Corinne O'Rama in Geneva.

Tournier died from carcinoma

Carcinoma

Carcinoma is the medical term for the most common type of cancer occurring in humans. Put simply, a carcinoma is a cancer that begins in a tissue that lines the inner or outer surfaces of the body, and that generally arises from cells originating in the endodermal or ectodermal germ layer during...

 at his home Le grain de blé (The grain of wheat) in Troinex, Switzerland.

Career

Through 1924 Tournier was assistant medical doctor at the Medical Polyclinic in Geneva under Prof. Bickel. In 1925 Tournier opened a private practice in Geneva and started operating as general medical practitioner.

Tournier became increasingly interested in Calvinism

Calvinism

Calvinism is a Protestant theological system and an approach to the Christian life...

 and the Reformed faith, and was heavily involved in civic and medical groups. In 1932 he joined the Oxford Group

Oxford Group

The Oxford Group was a Christian movement that had a following in Europe, China, Africa, Australia, Scandinavia and America in the 1920s and 30s. It was initiated by an American Lutheran pastor, Frank Buchman, who was of Swiss descent...

. As a result of his interests he investigated the relationship between medicine, counseling, and spiritual values. Although he initially considered giving up medicine for counseling, he finally decided to combine the two, and in 1937 he transformed his private medical practice into a counseling practice.

In 1940 he published his first book Médecine de la Personne (trans. The Healing of Persons), which was dedicated to Frank Buchman, the founder of the Oxford Group, wherein he advocates that man is more than just body and a mind, he is also a spiritual being. This combination is what makes man a person. Therefore, it is impossible to know and treat him if one disregards his deepest reality. After the success of Médecine de la Personne he became a prolific writer of books dealing with the subject. Although he did not have any formal training in psychiatry

Psychiatry

Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...

 or theology

Theology

Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...

, his writing has influenced a generation of medical and religious professionals the world over. His books would eventually be translated into thirteen languages.

Around 1946 he disassociated himself from the Oxford Group (now called Moral Re-Armament

Moral Re-Armament

Moral Re-Armament was an international Christian moral and spiritual movement that, in 1938, developed from the American minister Frank Buchman's Oxford Group. Buchman, a Lutheran, headed MRA for 23 years, from 1938 until his death in 1961...

). He would eventually (in 1982) reconcile with the group (renamed again as Initiatives of Change

Initiatives of Change

Initiatives of Change is a global organization dedicated to "building trust across the world's divides" of culture, nationality, belief, and background...

).

Psychosomatic medicine

Psychosomatic illness

Psychosomatic medicine is an interdisciplinary medical field studying the relationships of social, psychological, and behavioral factors on bodily processes and well-being in humans and animals...

 was still in its infancy, and Tournier observed that the contemporary approach to illness was purely organic and failed to consider the patient as a whole. Tournier saw the need to consider not only the physical aspects of health, but also the psychological and spiritual dimensions. He therefore invited medical colleagues from a variety of fields and a number of philosophers to reflect on this with him. 1947 marked the first meeting of this international study group called Médecine de La Personne, and which has met annually ever since. According to the group:

Medicine of the Person is not just another branch of medicine. It is an attitude towards contact, an approach to patient-care, applicable in all areas. It puts the emphasis on awareness of patients as whole persons, with places in their community and society. Both the organic and the psychological approach are integral parts of Medicine of the Person, as is consideration of the connection between state of health, life events, social insertion and spirituality.

Tournier and two other doctors established the ecumenical Group of Bossey (named after the Chateau de Bossey, near Geneva). His book, A Doctor's Casebook in the Light of the Bible, grew out of this effort. How Tournier practiced his work can be seen in A Tournier Companion.

Throughout his career Tournier was known for his presence, gentle personality and sincere demeanor, and his ability to communicate across language barriers. As his views became more popular, he was invited to lecture overseas. He would subsequently travel extensively to promote his ideas.

Tournier's world view and philosophy

Two religious experiences would underlie Tournier’s later work. When he was 12, he became a Christian. As he grew up he became active in the church, started writing articles about Calvinism, and argued for orthodoxy

Orthodoxy

The word orthodox, from Greek orthos + doxa , is generally used to mean the adherence to accepted norms, more specifically to creeds, especially in religion...

 and against liberalism

Liberalism

Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...

. His Christian experience did not, however, become totally meaningful to him until a second experience, which he called a “face-to-face encounter with God”. This encounter transformed his life and changed everything, and gave him a vital interest in “that other side of life, for its inner dimension, so necessary to us."

This encounter caused him to radically change his medical practice. Instead of merely treating the physical disorders of his patients, he started addressing the deeper problems of the whole person. In 1937 he wrote a letter to all his patients informing them of this new orientation.

Tournier describes his newfound interest in the whole person thus:

I can speak endlessly of myself, to myself or to someone else, without ever succeeding in giving a complete and truthful picture of myself... The same thing happens with all these people who come to see me, and take so much trouble over their efforts to describe themselves to me with strict accuracy; inevitably I form an image of them which derives as much from myself as from them. If they go and see one of my colleagues he will certainly not see them exactly as I do. And they for their part will not show themselves to him in the same way they show themselves to me.

The reader will see now why it is that this problem of the person has for twenty years been of such absorbing interest to me. It has a general significance which is of vital importance for all thought and civilization: what is man? But it also has a particular significance, which is equally important for my own life: who am I, really, myself?

Tournier believed in universal salvation, that all would eventually be saved. In response to a letter from a graduate student writing a master's thesis on his theology, Tournier wrote:

That you say as a theologian that I am a universalist is evident, in the sense that I believe that Jesus was sent into the world to save the sinners that we all are. This is what I understand Saint Paul to say when he mentions that sin has entered the world through one man, Adam, and spread to all men, and that he calls Jesus the second Adam through Whom redemption entered the world for all men, and even as he says 'all of creation,' that the redemption of Christ is the victory of God over the Fall. I believe that this great plan of salvation is universal, concerns not only all men but the universality of the world and that Jesus on the Cross has accomplished this Salvation, this reconciliation of men with God, that the 'chastisement' as Isaiah says is fallen upon Him to free men from the malediction of the Fall. This plan of God therefore seems to be collective, global, universal.

Tournier was active in the Ecumenical Institute of the World Council of Churches

World Council of Churches

The World Council of Churches is a worldwide fellowship of 349 global, regional and sub-regional, national and local churches seeking unity, a common witness and Christian service. It is a Christian ecumenical organization that is based in the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, Switzerland...

.

Legacy

Tournier's work has received widespread international interest and acclaim. According to Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl

Viktor Emil Frankl M.D., Ph.D. was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. Frankl was the founder of logotherapy, which is a form of Existential Analysis, the "Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy"...

:

He [Paul Tournier] was the pioneer of person-centered psychotherapy. Psychotherapy should also have a spiritual dimension, dealing with each person in his or her uniqueness and individuality. Psychotherapy cannot be personal enough.

Paul Tournier is remembered by the efforts of:

• The Paul Tournier Institute, a division of the Christian Medical and Dental Associations
  Christian Medical and Dental Associations
  The Christian Medical and Dental Associations is made up of the Christian Medical Association and the Christian Dental Association. As of 2011, CMDA had approximately 16,000 members. It is the United States affiliate of the International Christian Medical and Dental Association.The membership...
  
   (CMDA). The Paul Tournier Institute is an educational endeavor, providing unique resources developed and published by the CMDA.
• Association Paul Tournier, a non-profit organization promoting ideas of Paul Tournier.
• International Group of Medicine of the Whole Person, an organization dedicated to furthering the Medicine of the Whole Person through annual meetings.
• In 2006 Christianity Today magazine listed Paul Tournier's The Meaning of Persons as one of the top 50 books that have influenced the way Evangelicals think, talk, witness, worship, and live.

See also

Pastoral care

Pastoral care

Pastoral care is the ministry of care and counseling provided by pastors, chaplains and other religious leaders to members of their church or congregation, or to persons of all faiths and none within institutional settings. This can range anywhere from home visitation to formal counseling provided...

Biopsychosocial model

Biopsychosocial model

The biopsychosocial model is a general model or approach that posits that biological, psychological , and social factors, all play a significant role in human functioning in the context of disease or illness...

Health psychology

Health psychology

Health psychology is concerned with understanding how biological, psychological, environmental, and cultural factors are involved in physical health and illness. Health psychologists work alongside other medical professionals in clinical settings, work on behavior change in public health promotion,...

Existential therapy

Holistic medicine

External links

• (Paul Tournier Association