John Sarno
Doctor who treated back pain with psychological therapy
JOHN SARNO, who has died aged 93, was a doctor who endured the scorn of the mainstream medical community when he claimed that back pain was almost always rooted in psychological – rather than physical – injury.
Sarno’s theory evolved over decades spent treating patients at the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine in New York City. These patients complained of pain in various parts of their bodies – the back, neck, shoulders or buttocks. Invariably, their problems were attributed to a spinal abnormality or to strain brought on by bad posture, or by over- or underexercising. Treatments included ultrasound, massage and injections.
Sarno was dubious about the effectiveness of such interventions, however. Observing that most of his patients also suffered from a variety of stress-related illnesses, he suggested that their discomfort might be a physical response to emotional troubles. “There’s a leftover child in all of us that doesn’t want to be put under pressure”, he explained, “and indeed he can get very, very angry.”
According to this theory, patients might be repressing early traumatic experiences or tensions in their presentday relationships. Their muscle pain was caused by mild oxygen deprivation in the affected tissue, similar to the pain which a runner experiences when pushed to the limit during a race.
Sarno dubbed this phenomenon “tension myositis syndrome”, or TMS. While it was important, he stressed, to acknowledge to patients that their suffering was real, in most cases their condition would improve if they simply accepted its emotional component. Psychotherapy might also bring relief.
Surgery, however, would merely serve as “a very powerful placebo”, and while painkillers might lead to an improvement in overall mood, they would not address the root cause of the distress. In 1985 Sarno outlined his approach in Mind over Back Pain. A follow-up book, Healing Back Pain: The Mind-body Connection (1991), became a word-of-mouth bestseller.
Some accused Sarno of quackery, pointing to his failure to cite research findings in his books. Others hailed him as an early advocate of mind-body therapies, which have been increasingly popular across the Western world in the form of treatments such as yoga and acupuncture.
The radio personality Howard Stern dedicated his raunchy 1993 memoir Private Parts to Sarno, claiming the physician’s help had rid him of obsessive-compulsive disorder as well as back pain. A website entitled “Thank You, Dr Sarno” accumulated tributes from other grateful patients, and his professional acolytes included Dr Howard Schubiner, director of the Mind-body Medicine Center in Southfield, Michigan. Sarno himself vouched for the efficacy of his treatment: he claimed to have cured his allergies using the methods that he had developed while working with TMS sufferers.
John Ernest Sarno was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on June 23 1923 and graduated from the Horace Mann School, a private school for boys in the Bronx. After three years at Kalamazoo College in Michigan he left to join the US Army and worked in field hospitals in Europe until the end of the Second World War.
He received his medical degree from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and completed his training on Staten Island before settling into family practice. In 1960 he took up a residency in paediatric medicine at Columbiapresbyterian hospital.
He moved on to the Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at New York University and then, in 1965, to the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, where he worked until his retirement in 2012.
John Sarno’s first marriage ended in divorce. In 1967 he married Martha Lamarque. She survives him, with their daughter and three children from his first marriage.
John Sarno, born June 23 1923, died June 22 2017