It's a word. I didn't know that, until I just looked. It's a variant spelling of holistic. I actually like it better than holistic, since the base word is more recognizable.

P.S. At least I assume the "ouch" was about it being a misspelling. Maybe I'm wrong.

> the base word

Is it really the same word? holistic comes from Greek ὅλος, whereas whole is a word of Germanic origin.

Of course that doesn't mean they aren't from the same Indo-European root — after all, whole certainly has cognates in many languages with the same meaning, such as Russian целый. But Wiktionary tells me that whole is from Proto-Indo-European ٭kóylos, whereas holistic is from PIE ٭solh₂wós.

In any case, the initial w in whole is an innovation in Early Modern English without etymological justification, so a more logical choice to emphasize the similarity would be to revert to the spelling hole.

Probably not, but I was speaking much more informally. :) To be honest, I don't care whether it makes sense linguistically or not. It takes more than one hand to count the number of times I've looked up the meaning of holistic, because I encounter it in a context I care about so infrequently that I can never remember the meaning (at least I can never remember it accurately enough to not be unsure whether I have it correct. From context you can get the gist, but nuance may be lost). Wholistic works entirely better for me.

Holistic is a strange word anyway because it's a Latin suffix tacked onto a Germanic base. At least to my ears, it sounds wrong for that reason.

If someone tasked me to come up with a replacement word, I might suggest "integralist". As in "holistic approach" -> "integralist approach", etc.