Amos,

it has nothing to do with 'healing' it is symptom control. Pain is (usually) a symptom of an illness and pain perception is very subjective. That makes it a promising candidate for replacing pills by techniques using suggestion. I'm all for that of course. However, feeling pain less painful, whether by morphine or suggestion, doesn't make a cancer go away.

The placebo effect in actual healing lamentably looks much less promising yet than the placebo effect in influencing the subjective perception of pain.

A suggestion technique is to be prefered to pills if it works (that seems to be quite variable between persons) for it has not most of the side effects painkiller pills can have. However, one adverse side effect both painkiller pills and a placebo technique share: Pain has a warning function and if a readily available suggestion technique (or pill) suppresses effectively pain perception, the real cause that has triggered the warning signal of pain may be overlooked for just too long.

Wolfgang