Michael Galinsky just wrote a very thoughtful article about the article and what happened afterward:
http://rumur.com/power-resists-change/
Overall, I'm saddened by the way that things played out. Things have been going much better elsewhere in the movement. For example, Fran Anderson, who worked with Dr. Sarno for more than 30 years, was recently invited to give a very prestigious annual keynote:
http://thebowlbycentre.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Conference-leaflet.pdf
You can see from her and Eric Sherman's events page that they have a busy schedule of presentations at various conferences:
http://www.pathwaystopainrelief.com/upcoming_events.html
Likewise, it seems like Dr. Clarke is regularly invited to medical conferences to talk about how stress can cause illness. Finally, there have been a number of very successful conferences focusing on TMS (or
PPD as it was called in all of them after the first):
http://www.tmswiki.org/ppd/TMS_Conferences
Likewise, he upcoming conference organized by Georgie Oldfield and SIRPA is also looking to be very successful:
http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/sirpa-conference-2015.6665/
Michael Galinsky is very sophisticated, so I'm sure that he handled the interview very well. The question, then, is what went wrong, then?
Personally, my hunch is that it was about the writer and the audience. The writer chose a headline that looks to have been specifically chosen to inflame passions and then used the word "cult" twice in the portion of the article that she wrote. I couldn't think of a better way to set the audience up for skepticism.
In terms of the audience, my bet is that they are skeptical by nature and it is going to be hard to sell them a doctor to them who has been around for 40 years but hasn't been able to reach mainstream medicine. They probably trust the scientific method and immediately draw the conclusion that if a doctor's ideas haven't been accepted in 40 years, then its because he's a quack. To be honest, even though I think they are wrong in this case, I understand their skepticism.
This might explain why other doctors seem to be getting more traction. Dr. Schubiner has
his own mindbody clinic in a major hospital,
a blog at Psychology Today, and got funding to do
a Randomized Controlled Trial to show that his method works. The PPC is making absolutely amazing strides at connecting with mainstream institutions. And then there are the many successes listed above. David Hanscom has been selling a huge number of books, likely being the first person since the 80s to say that emotions can be the cause of the common pain syndromes and (ever so briefly) sell more than Dr. Sarno:
http://www.novelrank.com/user/forestfortreestms
It raises the question of whether Dr. Sarno's brand has been so tarnished in the eyes of the mainstream audiences that another name may do a better job of helping carry the movement forward.
We can't know that yet, but it's an interesting question. In the meantime, it's just nice to know that there are bright spots elsewhere in the movement. As we gain more experience, we will become better and better at spreading the word.