As they appear to us, we separate phenomena into objects and events according to an apparently phenomenological distinction that is both radical and undisputed. The object appears according to four basic characteristics: it is predictable; it is reproducible; it results from a cause acting as an effect; and it always inscribes itself within the conditions of possibility for experience. The event appears as a reversal of these characteristics: it appears without warning; it appears once and for all, that is, without (...) the possibility of repetition or reproduction; it appears without any assignable or anterior cause; and finally it appears in defiance of the conditions of the possibility for experience—as the impossible made possible. (shrink)

This essay argues that philosophical phenomenology can provide important insights into the patient-physician relationship. In particular, it is noted that the physician and patient encounter the experience of illness from within the context of different "worlds", each "world" providing a horizon of meaning. Such phenomenological notions as focusing, habits of mind, finite provinces of meaning, and relevance are shown to be central to the way these "worlds" are constituted. An eidetic interpretation of illness is proposed. Such an interpretation discloses certain (...) essential characteristics that pertain to the experience of illness, per se , regardless of its manifestation in terms of a particular disease state. It is suggested that, if a shared world of meaning is to be constituted between physician and patient, the eidetic characteristics of illness must be recognized by the physician. Keywords: phenomenology, patient-physician relationship, illness-as-lived, habits of mind, relevance, eidetic CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

In this paper I will try to systematically lay out and describe the multiple dimensions of the embodied experience of illness, which until recently has been the main focus within the field of the phenomenology of medicine. In order to do this, I will turn to analysis of the nature of embodiment in Husserl’s phenomenology. I will argue that based on Husserl’s phenomenology of the body, one can distinguish four ways of experiencing one’s body, or four dimensions of embodiment. I (...) will distinguish between experience of one’s body as 1) a bearer of sensations ; 2) a seat of free movement, characterized by the faculty of “I can” ; 3) a material thing in a causal relationship with the material world ; 4) a material thing embedded in a social context. I will then apply the proposed classification of dimensions of embodiment to the experience of illness, focusing on the various ways these dimensions have been used within the phenomenology of medicine. This serves two purposes. Firstly, it provides a framework for classification of the existing interpretations of the experience of illness; secondly, it opens up a way for a comprehensive analysis of the experience of illness which includes both individual and social aspects of embodiment as well as their mutual intertwining. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a phenomenology of falling ill by presenting, interpreting and developing the basic model we find in Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness. The three steps identified by Sartre in this process are analysed, developed further and brought to a five- step model: pre-reflective experience of discomfort, lived, bodily discomfort, suffered illness, disease pondering, and disease state. To fall ill is to fall victim to a gradual process of alienation, and with each step this alienating process is (...) taken to a new qualitative level. Consequently, the five steps of falling ill have not only a contingent chronological order but also a kind of logical order, in that they typically presuppose each other. I adopt Sartre's focus on embodiment as the core ground of the alienation process, but point out that the alienation of the body in illness is not only the experience of a psychic object, but an experience of the independent life of one's own body. This facticity of the body is the result neither of the gaze of the other person, nor of a reflection adopting the outer perspective of the other in an indirect way, but is a result of the very otherness of one's own body, which addresses and plagues us when we fall ill. I use examples of falling ill and being a patient to show how a phenomenology of falling ill can be helpful in educating health-care personnel about the ways of the lived body. (shrink)

In this paper I briefly summarize Pellegrino’s phenomenological analysis of the ethics of the physician–patient relationship. In delineating the essential elements of the healing relationship, Pellegrino demonstrates the necessity for health care professionals to understand the patient’s lived experience of illness. In considering the phenomenon of illness, I identify certain essential characteristics of illness-as-lived that provide a basis for developing a rigorous understanding of the patient’s experience. I note recent developments in the systematic delivery of health care that make it (...) difficult for health care professionals to realize Pellegrino’s ethical model of the role of healer. Such developments limit both the physician’s freedom to act on behalf of the patient without the constraint of third parties and the physician’s freedom to act in light of his or her own ethical or religious convictions. Given these difficulties, I note MacIntyre’s call for the development of moral communities, as an alternative to the prevailing culture, and share a first-hand example illustrating how intentional Christian community provides an alternative nurturing context that permits the full development of the healing relationship. (shrink)

In the context of the end of life, many authors point out how the experience of identity is crucial for the well-being of patients with advanced disease. They define this identity in terms of autonomy, control, or dependence, associating these concepts with the sense of personal dignity. From the perspective of the phenomenology of embodiment, Kay Toombs and other authors have investigated the ways disease can impact on the subjective world of patients and have stressed that a consideration of this (...) personal world can promote understanding and recognition of their experience. Based on the findings of qualitative studies of the perception of dignity and autonomy in patients at the end of life, this analysis assesses concepts such as being-in-the-world in illness, embodiment, lived body versus objective body or the gaze of the other from a Toombsian phenomenological perspective. (shrink)

During the last few decades, many thinkers have advocated for the importance of the phenomenological approach in developing the understanding of the lived experience of illness. In their attempts, they have referred to ideas found in the history of phenomenology, most notably, in the works of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre. The aim of this paper is to sketch out an interpretation of illness based on a yet unexplored conceptual framework of the phenomenology of French thinker (...) Jean-Luc Marion. Focusing on concepts of the saturated phenomenon and flesh, the paper develops an interpretation of illness as the saturated phenomenon, which highlights a variety of dimensions of illness already elaborated within the phenomenology of medicine, such as the affective dimension of illness, the disruptive dimension of illness, the transformed perception of the self in illness, mineness of flesh in illness and the inexpressible and hermeneutical dimension of illness. In addition to that, the paper explores some of the consequences the proposed interpretation of illness offers regarding the nature of illness and health. It is argued that illness in its essence is very similar to the experience of other saturated phenomena, suggesting that the difference between them does not lie within the character of the affective givenness, but rather within the dynamic relationship between the affective givenness and its conceptualization. It is also shown that the experience of health is compatible with the experience of saturation and thus is not limited to the tacit and harmonious background state. (shrink)

Throughout the Western world people turn towards the health care system seeking help for a variety of psychosomatic/psychosocial health problems. They become “patients” and find themselves within a system of practises that conceptualizes their bodies as “objective” bodies, treats their ill health in terms of the malfunctioning machine, and compartmentalizes their lived experiences into medically interpreted symptoms and signs of underlying biological dysfunction. The aim of this article is to present an alternative way of describing ill health and rehabilitation using (...) the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty in order to deepen our understanding of the rehabilitation process. I will explore how the experience of chronic pain ruptures the natural connection between body and world and how the rehabilitation process can be understood as the re-insertion of the body into the flow of experience, where the body “disappears” into its natural silence in order to allow the world to once again unfold. The experience of chronic pain places the painful body in focus, resulting in a diminished articulation of both self and world. Persons with illness suffer not only from the physical aspects of pain and discomfort but also from a loss of identity where one feels alienated and detached from things that used to give meaning to ones life. Rehabilitation must not only address the material (medical) body but also the diminished sense of self as well as the retreat from the world outside of the painful body. (shrink)

In this paper, changes in identity and selfhood experienced through organ transplantation are analyzed from a phenomenological point of view. The chief examples are heart and face transplants. Similarities and differences between the examples are fleshed out by way of identifying three layers of selfhood in which the procedures have effects: embodied selfhood, self-reflection, and social-narrative identity. Organ transplantation is tied to processes of alienation in the three layers of selfhood, first and foremost a bodily alienation experienced through illness or (...) injury and in going through and recovering from the operation. However, in cases in which the organ in question is taken to harbor the identity of another person, because of its symbolic qualities (the heart) or its expressive qualities (the face), the alienation process may also involve the otherness of another person making itself, at least imaginatively, known. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore nuances within the field of bodily self-awareness. My starting-point is phenomenological. I focus on how the subject experiences her or his body, i.e. how the body stands forth to the subject. I build on the phenomenologist Drew Leder’s distinction between bodily dis-appearance and dys-appearance. In bodily dis-appearance, I am only prereflectively aware of my body. My body is not a thematic object of my experience. Bodily dys-appearance takes place when the body appears (...) to me as “ill” or “bad.” This is often the case when I experience pain or illness. Here, I will examine three versions of bodily dys-appearance. Whereas many phenomenological studies have explored cases of bodily dys-appearance, few studies have focused on the opposite of bodily dys-appearance, i.e. on bodily modes of being where the body appears to the subject as something good, easy or well. This is done in this article. When the body stands forth as good, easy or well to the subject, I suggest that the body eu-appears to this person. The analysis of eu-appearance shows that the subject can attend to her or his body as something positive and that this attention need not result in discomfort or alienation. Eu-appearance can take place in physical exercise, in sexual pleasure and in some cases of wanted pregnancies. I also discuss, briefly, the case of masochism. (shrink)

In this paper, an attempt is made to develop an understanding of the essence of illness based on a reading of Martin Heidegger’s pivotal work Being and Time. The hypothesis put forward is that a phenomenology of illness can be carried out through highlighting the concept of otherness in relation to meaningfulness. Otherness is to be understood here as a foreignness that permeates the ill life when the lived body takes on alien qualities. A further specification of this kind of (...) otherness can be found with the concept of unhomelike being-in-the-world. Health, in contrast to this frustrating unhomelikeness, is a homelike being-in-the-world in which the lived body in most cases has a transparent quality as the point of access to the world in understanding activities. The paper then proposes that the temporal structure of illness can be conceptualised as an alienation of past and future, whereby one’s past and future appear alien, compared with what was the case before the onset of illness. The remainder of the paper follows two paths as regards the temporality of illness. The first path explores the temporality of the body in relation to the temporality of the being-in-the-world of the self. One way of understanding the alienating character of illness is that nature, as the temporality of our bodies, ceases to obey our attempts to make sense of phenomena: the time of the body no longer fits into the time of the self. The second path explored in the paper is that of narrativity. When we make sense of the present, in relation to our future and past, we do so in a special manner, namely, by structuring our experiences in the form of stories. Illness breaks in on us as a rift in these stories, necessitating a retelling of the past and a re-envisioning of the future in an effort to address and change their alienated character. These stories, however, never allow us to leave the silent otherness of our bodies behind. They are stories nurtured by the time of nature at the heart of our existence. It is then claimed that the idea of life’s being a story must be understood in a metaphorical sense, and an exploration of how phenomenology addresses the metaphoric quality of its conceptuality is ushered in. It is pointed out that metaphors can be systematically related to each other and that they always have a founding ground in the orientation and basic activities of the lived body. Therefore, if the concepts used in working out a phenomenological theory of health and illness are, to a certain extent, metaphorical, one could, nevertheless, claim that the metaphoric qualities of the phenomenological concepts are primary in referring back to the lived body and the way it inhabits the world. (shrink)

In a majority of situations the normal adult maintains posture or moves without consciously monitoring motor activity. Posture and movement are usually close to automatic; they tend to take care of themselves, outside of attentive regard. One's body, in such cases, effaces itself as one is geared into a particular intentional goal. This effacement is possible because of the normal functioning of a body schema. Body schema can be defined as a system of preconscious, subpersonal processes that play a dynamic (...) role in governing posture and movement (Head, 1920). There is an important and often overlooked conceptual difference between the subpersonal body schema and what is usually called body image . The latter is most often defined as a conscious idea or mental representation that one has of one's own body (for example, Adame, Radell, Johnson, and Cole, 1991; Gardner and Moncrieff, 1988; Schilder, 1935). Despite the conceptual difference many researchers use the terms interchangeably, leading to both a terminological and conceptual confusion. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the various meanings of embodiment from a patient’s perspective. Resorting to phenomenology of health and medicine, I take the idea of ‘lived experience’ as starting point. On the basis of an analysis of phenomenology’s call for bracketing the natural attitude and its reduction to the transcendental, I will explain, however, that in medical phenomenological literature ‘lived experience’ is commonly one-sidedly interpreted. In my paper, I clarify in what way the idea of ‘lived experience’ should be (...) revisited and, subsequently, what this reconsideration means for phenomenological research on embodiment in health and medicine. The insight that the body is a condition of possibility for world-disclosing yet, at the same time, itself conditioned by this world forces us to not only zoom in on the body’s subject-side, but also on its object-side. I argue that in order to render account for this double body ontology, phenomenology should include empirical sociological analyses as well. I thus argue in favor of the idea of a socio-phenomenology. Drawing on material from my own research project on embodied self-experiences after breast surgery, I show how this approach can be fruitful in interpreting the impact of disfigurements on a person’s embodied agency, or a person’s ‘I can’. (shrink)