The white coat functions as medicine’s most powerful symbol, yet its role as both sacred vestment and neurobiological disruptor remains critically underexamined. While conventional analysis focuses on the “white coat effect” as simple anxiety response, deeper investigation reveals systematic disruption of healing networks at neurological, psychological, and spiritual levels.
To expose the white coat as false sacred object that fundamentally compromises therapeutic relationships through neurobiological disruption, cultural colonization, and the perpetuation of harmful medical hierarchies. This heretical analysis challenges medicine’s denial of its ritual nature while proposing revolutionary alternatives.
This radical theological and neuroscientific critique synthesizes findings from functional neuroimaging, autonomic physiology, mirror neuron research, and epigenetic studies, integrated with phenomenological analysis and clinical experience. The investigation draws upon Kabbalistic concepts, postcolonial theory, and embodied theology to reveal medicine’s hidden religious dimensions.
Neuroimaging reveals that white coats simultaneously activate nociceptive (pain) networks while hijacking placebo responses, creating neurological double-binds that prevent authentic healing states. The garment disrupts the default mode network essential for selfhood, suppresses vagal tone necessary for parasympathetic healing, and may create lasting neuroplastic changes resembling trauma responses. These effects operate below conscious awareness, creating “iatrogenic neural injury” that compounds across clinical encounters. Cultural analysis reveals the coat as instrument of colonial domination, enforcing Western medical hegemony while excluding traditional healing wisdom.
The white coat constitutes a systematic barrier to authentic therapeutic relationship, functioning as both liturgical costume in medicine’s denied religious system and neurobiological disruptor of healing networks. Revolutionary “therapeutic undressing” the contextual abandonment of formal medical attire represents necessary iconoclasm against false sacred authority. Post-coat medicine would prioritize vulnerable competence over performative authority, enabling the neural synchrony and spiritual presence essential for genuine healing encounter.
Keywords: White coat effect, therapeutic relationship, medical authority, neurobiological disruption, sacred deception, medical colonialism, therapeutic presence, healing networks, iatrogenic trauma, post-coat medicine.
Citation:Ungar-Sargon, J. (2025). The White Coat Heresy : Unveiling Medicine’s Sacred Deception a Radical Inquiry into the Liturgical Costume of Modern Medicine. J Psychol Neurosci; 7(4):1-8. DOI : https://doi.org/10.47485/2693-2490.1130