While there has been a vast amount of research on breast cancer in recent years, areas within this domain remain unexplored. For instance, there have been few attempts to marry an understanding of the social context in which breast cancer occurs with an understanding of subjective experiences of this condition. The purpose of this study was to explore women's experiences of embodiment after breast cancer, utilizing a phenomenological approach rooted in a feminist perspective. The focus of this article is upon (...) the changes to embodiment that are long‐term. Twelve women were interviewed on two occasions each and were asked to talk about changes to their bodies that occurred as a result of breast cancer. Three key themes were identified: (1) how it feels (e.g. sensation and breast loss); (2) managing appearances (e.g. wearing prostheses); and (3) treatments without end (e.g. menopause). The findings of this study show that women with breast cancer are a diverse group and that survivorship is a dynamic, life‐long process, which suggests that health professionals can play an important role in establishing interdisciplinary approaches to caring, beyond the conclusion of acute treatment. (shrink)

Evaluation of quality of life, psychic and bodily well-being is becoming increasingly important in oncology aftercare. This type of assessment is mainly carried out by medical psychologists. In this paper I will seek to show that body experience valuation has, besides its psychological usefulness, a normative and practical dimension. Body experience evaluation aims at establishing the way a person experiences and appreciates his or her physical appearance, intactness and competence. This valuation constitutes one’s ‘body image’. While, first, interpreting the meaning (...) of body image and, second, indicating the limitations of current psychological body image assessment, I argue that the normative aspect of body image is related to the experience of bodily wholeness or bodily integrity. Since this experience is contextualized by a person’s life story, evaluation should also focus on narrative aspects. I finally suggest that the interpretation of body experience is not only valuable to assess a person’s quality of life after treatment, but that it can also be useful in counseling prior to interventions, since it can support patients in making decisions about interventions that will change their bodies. To apply this type of evaluation to oncology practice, a rich and tailored vocabulary of body experiences has to be developed. (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)

This paper considers how the experience of illness fits within Sartre’s account of embodiment in Being and Nothingness. Sartre makes some remarks about illness, but does not develop a full account. I show that the anti‐naturalistic ontological framework in which Sartre’s discussion of the body is placed, which opposes my ‘being‐for‐Others’ to my ‘being‐for‐myself’, imposes a revisionary account of illness, and how Sartre’s model of interpersonal relations affects his view of doctors, and their role in the illness experience. I note (...) and discuss the connection Sartre draws between illness and bad faith. I also point out that recent phenomenologically inspired criticisms of the medical establishment that draw on Sartre’s account of the body are limited by their failure to engage with Sartre’s ontology. (shrink)

POHLMAN S, CIBULKA NJ, PALMER JL, LORENZ RA and SMITHBATTLE L. Nursing Inquiry 2013; 20: 71–81 The placebo puzzle: examining the discordant space between biomedical science and illness/healingThe placebo response presents an enigma to biomedical science: how can ‘inert’ or ‘sham’ procedures reduce symptoms and produce physiological changes that are comparable to prescribed treatments? In this study, we examine this puzzle by explicating the discordant space between the prevailing biomedical paradigm, which focuses on a technical understanding of diagnosis and treatment, (...) and a broader understanding of illness and healing as relational and embodied. Although biomedical achievements are impressive, the knowledge resulting from this paradigm is limited by its ontological and epistemological assumptions. When the body and world are objectified, illness meanings, therapeutic relationships, and healing practices are dismissed or distorted. In spite of a robust critique of the tenets of biomedicine for guiding practice, the biomedical paradigm retains a tenacious hold on evidence-based medicine and nursing, downplaying our clinical understanding of the sentient body, patients’ life-worlds, and illness and healing. In reality, skilled nurses rely on multiple forms of knowledge in providing high-quality care to particular patients. Clinically wise nurses integrate their experience and knowledge of patients’ priorities, fears, and illness trajectories along with biomedical findings to make astute judgments and promote health and healing. (shrink)

On the basis of extensive research on the relationship between physical activity, exercise and health, as well as strong support from policymakers and practitioners, the “Exercise is Medicine” initiative has become something of a linchpin in the agenda for modern healthcare reform and reflects a broader acceptance that the philosophy of health politics must shift from social engineering to performativity. However, in spite of the avowed commitment to encouraging individuals to take on a more reflexive relation to their health, it (...) remains unclear as to whether an initiative such as this is, unambiguously, a good thing. In this paper, a number of cautionary remarks are made with respect to “Exercise is Medicine” in principle as well as in practice. Firstly, it is argued that equating exercise with medicine is to equate it with a definition of and relation to the body to which it is not entirely akin. And secondly, it is argued that any proposed alignment of the fitness and healthcare industries needs further critical examination, a realigning of interests, and a thorough reconsideration of their suitability of fit. (shrink)

The move to patient-centered medical practice is important for providing relevant and sustainable health care. Narrative medicine, for example, suggests that patients should be involved significantly in diagnosis and treatment. In order to understand the meaning of symptoms and interventions, therefore, physicians must enter the life worlds of patients. But physicians face high patient loads and limited time for extended consultations. In current medical practice, then, is narrative medicine possible? We argue that engaging patient perspectives in the medical visit does (...) not necessarily require a lengthy interview. Instead, a new orientation to this process that emphasizes dialogue between practitioners and patients should be considered. In this new model, the purpose of the visit is to communicate successfully and develop a mutual understanding of illness and care. (shrink)

The essay examines Robin Cook’s Coma and Priscille Sibley’s The Promise of Stardust that dramatize the reified and disposable status of the brain-dead patients who are classified as nonpersons. The essay argues that the man-machine entanglement as depicted in the novels constructs a deterritorialized and entangled form of subjectivity that intervenes in the dominant biomedical understanding of personhood and agency that we notionally associate with a conscious mind. The essay concludes its arguments by discussing Alexander Beliaev’s Professor Dowell’s Head which (...) depicts human subjectivity as an essentially embodied and distributive phenomenon and interrogates the Cartesian mind body dualism embedded in the dominant biomedical narratives. (shrink)

Throughout the development of an "ethic of care" different from an "ethic of justice," the relationship between the two has been problematic. Are they theories between which one must choose? Are they complementary? Are they domain-specific? In support of my view that neither is adequate by itself, I here examine the private domain of care of the dying by intimates, and find there important issues both of care and of justice.

Many patients experience aspects of treatment and care as dehumanizing because the body is considered separate from the self and its life context. An attempt to transcend viewing persons in dualistic terms is posed by phenomenologists who focus not on “the body” as such but on what it means to be “embodied.” In this paper, we review the relevance of the phenomenology of the body for health care and report the results of comparing Sally Gadow’s phenomenological insights about body-self unity (...) with a qualitative analysis of patients’ accounts of satisfaction with the outcome of hand surgery. We illustrate the ways in which our findings were and were not congruent with Gadow’s conceptualization of embodiment and highlight aspects that are ambiguous. We conclude that the body-self dialectical relationship should be recast as a body-self-society trialectic and discuss the implications of this new conceptualization for clinical practices. (shrink)

The disposal of limbs remains absent from our understandings of amputation, with ‘estranged limbs’ occupying a liminal position. Despite acceptance that the appropriate disposal of human tissue matters on moral, ethical and legal grounds, limbs and their disposal is estranged from these discourses, mirroring the experience of the limbs themselves. This article then examines this absence around disposal, considering both the options which exist for the disposal of limbs after amputation, as well as why disposal itself remains sidelined from our (...) broader understandings of the body. Practices for disposal that encompass both traditional clinical approaches and more unusual patient choices will be discussed – through the discussion of these as potential ‘disposalscapes’. Utilising concepts from the work of Crawford, Shildrick and Steinberg and Slatman and Widdershoven, the potential importance of the disposal of limbs to patients and the role of disposalscapes within this are considered. (shrink)

Public conversation about biological contributors to mental disorder often centers on whether the problem is “biological or not.” In this paper, we propose moving beyond this bifurcation to a very different question:how exactlyare these problems understood to be biological? Specifically, we consider four issues around which different interpretations of the body’s relationship to mental disorder exist:1. The body’s relationship to day-to-day action; 2. The extent to which the body is changeable; 3. The body’s relationship to context; 4. The degree to (...) which states of the body directly cause mental disorder.Drawing on the work of Merleau-Ponty and other phenomenologists, we examine different responses to these questions and associated implications for how mental health treatment and recovery come to be experienced. Finally, we consider broader questions these patterns raise, including why certain portrayals of the brain dominate public attention and how to foster more deliberation in this regard. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates how the problematic kinds of epistemic power that physicians have can diminish the epistemic privilege that pregnant women have over their bodies and can put them in a state of epistemic powerlessness. This result, I argue, constitutes an epistemic injustice for many pregnant women. A reconsideration of how we understand and care for pregnant women and of the physician–patient relationship can provide us with a valuable context and starting point for helping to alleviate the knowledge/power problems that (...) are symptomatic of the current system and structure of medicine. I suggest that we can begin to confront this kind of injustice if medicine adopts a more phenomenological understanding of bodies and if physicians and patients—in this case, pregnant women—become what I call “epistemic peers.”. (shrink)

Proceedings of the annual congress of the Finnish Philosophical Association in 2013. Theme: memory.

Based upon a collaborative autoethnographic research project, this article explores from a sociological perspective the emotional dimension of the injured sporting body. It takes as its analytic focus the journey, rehabilitative, emotional and narrative, of two middle-aged, non-élite, middle/long-distance runners who encountered serious, long-term knee injuries. The paper examines in particular the interactional and narrative elements of the rehabilitative journey, focussing on dimensions of the emotion management, emotion work, and emotional intersubjectivity of the researcher/author and her training partner as they (...) struggled to contend with the liminality of the injured athletic role, and to maintain positive identities in the face of serious threat to their running selves. (shrink)