All relevant information, including the symptom as well as the patient’s other general characteristics, is gathered and woven together until it forms what Chinese medicine calls a “pattern of disharmony.” This pattern of disharmony describes a situation of
“imbalance” in a patient’s body. Oriental diagnostic technique does not turn up a specific disease entity or a precise cause, but renders an almost poetic, yet workable, description of a whole person. The question of cause and effect is always secondary to the overall pattern. One does not ask, “What X is causing Y?” but rather, “What is the relationship between X and Y?” The Chinese are interested in discerning the relationships among bodily events occurring at the same time. The logic of Chinese medicine is organismic or synthetic, attempting to organize symptoms and signs into understandable configurations. The total configurations, the patterns of disharmony, provide the framework for treatment. The therapy then attempts to bring the configuration into balance, to restore harmony to the individual.
