The Concept of Ulysses as An Understanding Form of Mental Illness in Individualized Societies: Testimonies in the Greek Post-Asylum Era (original) (raw)
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Illness as a Phenomenon of Being-in-the-World with Others
Medical Humanities, 2018
Plato’s Charmides, I argue, is a remarkably productive text for confronting and questioning some common presuppositions about the body and illness, particularly when we take seriously Socrates’ claim that healing Charmides’ headaches requires first examining—and perhaps healing—his soul. I begin by turning to the work of the psychiatrist and medical anthropologist Arthur Kleinman to argue that even if the pain Charmides experiences is more ‘physical’than ‘mental’, a physical exam and physical intervention alone will not necessarily be effective in treating his headaches. Next, I turn to the work of the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty and his discussion of the phenomenon of the ‘phantom limb’ to argue that the body, rather than simply being a physical object is, instead, primarily an experiencing subject; the body is fundamentally our way of having a world. Furthermore, illness, rather than being conceived of as either a physical or mental disorder, should instead be understood in terms of a person’s being-in-the-world with others. Finally, I return to Plato’s Charmides and argue that, just as the phantom limb reflects the destruction of a specific way of being-in-the-world with others, Charmides’ headaches reflect the construction of a specific way of being-in-the-world with others. This article has been accepted for publication in Medical Humanities, 2018 following peer review, and the Version of Record can be accessed online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2018-011572 © Susan Bredlau
Phenomenology of Illness H.Carel, 2016 Oxford, Oxford University Press xi + 248 pp, $50.00 (hb)
Journal of Applied Philosophy, 2018
Havi Carel's new book is the culmination of over a decade of thinking about illness. Her engagement with the subject is both academic and personal. After being diagnosed with a life-limiting lung disease, Carel published a powerful reflection of her own experiences of illness in Illness: The Cry of the Flesh (Durham: Acumen Publishing, 2008), and has written a number of academic articles developing a phenomenology of illness since. The Phenomenology of Illness contains the best of both these approaches, blending together personal anecdote and rigorous philosophical analysis to deepen our understanding of what it means to be ill. Written for an academic audience, the book has two aims: 'to contribute to the understanding of illness through the use of philosophy, and to demonstrate the importance of illness for philosophy' (p. 2). What motivates a phenomenological approach to illness? Carel offers three rationales: as the study of lived experience, phenomenology is a natural approach to understanding the variety of illness experiences; it provides a non-prescriptive framework free of conceptual restrictions; and it underscores the centrality of the body to understanding human experience (p. 7). The structure of the book can be divided into roughly two sections. The first five chapters develop the general framework for a phenomenology of illness, with the final chapter in this half applying the framework to respiratory illness. The second section of the book explores the relationship between illness and other key philosophical topics, namely, wellbeing, death, and epistemic injustice. Thus, the structure aptly mirrors the two-part aim of her project, leveraging the conceptual tools of phenomenology to examine illness, and conversely, exploring how illness may illuminate traditional debates in philosophy. A brief note: many of our thoughts in this review developed during a term-long seminar on Carel's book. This was attended by philosophers (both analytic and continental), social scientists and clinical practitioners, among others. The value of Carel's project was evident throughout the discussions. The book not only reframed issues traditionally viewed under the scope of Anglo-American philosophy; it also offered a shared language and perspective for engagement between the social sciences, humanities, and the medical sciences. Carel's approach is based on a definition of illness as 'serious, chronic, and lifechanging ill health, as opposed to a cold or a bout of tonsillitis' (p. 2). Illness is something which changes the subject's way of being, in a way that a simple cold does not. Following others, Carel contrasts this with disease, whereby disease is seen as physiological dysfunction. The book makes great use of this distinction and it no doubt
The Philosophical Role of Illness
Metaphilosophy 45(1): 20-40, 2014
This article examines the philosophical role of illness. It briefly surveys the philosophical role accorded to illness in the history of philosophy and explains why illness merits such a role. It suggests that illness modifies, and thus sheds light on, normal experience, revealing its ordinary and therefore overlooked structure. Illness also provides an opportunity for reflection by performing a kind of suspension (epoché) of previously held beliefs, including tacit beliefs. The article argues that these characteristics warrant a philosophical role for illness. While the performance of most philosophical procedures is volitional and theoretical, however, illness is uninvited and threatening, throwing the ill person into anxiety and uncertainty. As such it can be viewed as a radical philosophical motivation that can profoundly alter our outlook. The article suggests that illness can change the ways in which we philosophise: it may shape philosophical methods and concerns and change one’s sense of salience and conception of philosophy. Keywords: phenomenology, illness, philosophical method, Merleau-Ponty, epoché, Husserl.
Das unheimliche – Towards a phenomenology of illness
Medicine, Health Care, and Philosophy
In this article I aim at developing a phenomenology of illness through a critical interpretation of the works of Sigmund Freud and Martin Heidegger. The phenomenon of " Unheimlichkeit " – uncanniness and unhomelikeness – is demonstrated not only to play a key role in the theories of Freud and Heidegger, but also to constitute the essence of the experience of illness. Two different modes of unhomelikeness – " The mind uncanny " and " The world uncanny " – are in this connection explored as constitutive parts of the phenomenon of illness. The consequence I draw from this analysis is that the mission of health care professionals must be not only to cure diseases, but actually, through devoting attention to the being-in-the-world of the patient, also to open up possible paths back to homelikeness. This mission can only be carried out if medicine acknowledges the basic importance of the meaning-realm of the patient's life – his or her life-world characteristics.
While anthropology and other social sciences have long explored the social and cultural shaping of the self and personhood, many scholars have recently employed the rubric of “subjectivity” to articulate the links between collective phenomena and the subjective lives of individuals. This graduate seminar will examine “subjectivity”—and related concepts—focusing on topics where such ideas have been particularly fruitful: illness, pathology and suffering. Throughout the course we will critically examine the terms “self,” “personhood” and “subjectivity”—and their relationship to one another. Each week we will discuss a mix of conceptual and ethnographic readings which draw on some common analytical frameworks and categories, including narrative theory, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, biopower and science and technology studies.
Illness as a condition of our existence in the world: on illness and pathic existence
This paper seeks to find different ways of addressing illness as an experience essential to the understanding of being a human being. As a conceptual point of departure, we suggest the notion of 'pathic existence' as developed by the German physician and philosopher Viktor von Weizsäcker (1886e1957). Through an analysis of his conceptualisation of the pathic and of pathic categories, we demonstrate how this auxiliary typology may be of help in unveiling different modes of ill-being, or Kranksein. Furthermore, we show how illness plays a paradigmatic role in this type of existence. We discuss how von Weizsäcker's claim of illness as " a way of being human " indicates how such a view of the illness existence both differs from and touches upon other streams of thought within the philosophy of medicine and medical ethics. Finally, we highlight some of the normative implications emerging from this perspective of relevance in today's medicine.
Analytica, 2018
Applied phenomenology of illness elaborated the paradigm of living body, which has been successful in the analysis of the structures of the experience of disease. One of the main results of this analysis is the elucidation of the concept of illness in terms of an attunement (Stimmung) of the uncanniness (Unheimlichkeit) that is relative to a disruption in the unity of the living body. The ill person finds herself in an atmosphere of uncanniness in relation to her own body, which appears analogously to a broken tool. In this paper, I question the analogy with the broken tool, focusing in the examination of the phenomenon of bodily doubt. My suggestion is that the explicitation of the theory of categories implied in the phenomenology of bodily doubt leads to a pluralism of modes of being in which the corresponding type of generality precludes the interpretation of the experience of illness as the salience of a broken tool. As a result, this analysis remains consistent with the interpretation of illness as the atmosphere of uncanniness, which is presented here as the disruption in the unity of two ways of being: existence and life.
Suffer of others illness: self-therapy thought poetic autoethnography inquiry
Journal of Poetry Therapy, 2020
This article discusses a poetic autoethnography inquiry about living with Others-illness. I show how the relation is established between the self and society, culture and personality. I want to show my struggle with a dark experience and problems of being with Others-illness. I use a poetic autoethnography inquiry to transform myself, to understand better my experience, but also to provoke, to move, to dispute the meaning and invite to a dialogue.