What Is Traditional, Complementary, and Integrative Medicine: An Operational Typology (Part 4, Therapeutic Integration)

Background: This is the final article in a four-part series that presents an operational typology of the field of Traditional, Complementary, and Integrative Medicine (TCIM). Using a series of six “ideal types” (each with two or more subtypes), the TCIM typology provides theoretically driven parameters for classifying the wide range of TCIM therapeutic approaches in use across the globe. Methods: The current article, focused on the sixth type—Integrative Therapeutics—closes the series by synthetically elaborating on five distinct “forms” of therapeutic integration (sometimes termed “integrative medicine” or “integrative health care”) at play across the globe: Melting Pot, Co-optation, Multiculturalism, Transculturation, and Third Space. Results: Those five forms of integration, elaborated with reference to critical social science and political science literatures and using real-world examples, fall along with a spectrum between the two polarized Integrative Therapeutics subtypes identified in a previous article: (1) Integrative Assimilation and (2) Integrative Equity. These polarities account explicitly for the paradigmatic differences between, and complex differential power relations among TCIM therapeutics and—in particular—with Biomedicine. Conclusion: Together, the five forms of Integrative Therapeutics offer an extended typological model for classifying the range of scenarios in which TCIM therapeutics may come to interface with one another, and with Biomedicine, in pursuit of health and well-being for all.