Henry K. Beecher
Beecher's work contributed to the understanding of how perception of an event or a situation - real or imagined, rational or irrational - can cause consequential actions to occur.
Henry K. Beecher (1904–1976) was a controversial anesthesiologist who, for the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1950s, studied the Placebo Effect. The placebo effect is a remarkable phenomenon whereby a harmless pill or simulated treatment produces real-world physiological effects in humans1.
Beecher's work contributed to the understanding of how perception of an event or a situation - real or imagined, rational or irrational - can cause consequential actions to occur. This concept is also related to the Thomas Theorem, which states that "if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences"1.
Sources
- Jacobsen, Annie. Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis. Little, Brown and Company, 2017. ↩
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