Dialogue and the Interpretation of Illness

Dialogue and the Interpretation of Illness PDF

Author: Robert Pool

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-08-19

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 1000325067

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The etiology of the Wimbum people in the Western Grassfields of Cameroon is described through an examination of the way in which the meanings of key concepts, used to interpret and explain illness and other forms of misfortune, are continually being produced and reproduced in the praxis of everyday communication. During the course of numerous dialogues, witchcraft, a highly ambivalent force, gradually emerges as the prime mover. As destructive cannibals or respectable elders the witches are the ultimate cause of all significant illness, misfortune and death, and as diviners they are also the ultimate judges who apportion moral responsibility. Even the ancestors and the traditional gods turn out to be fronts behind which the witches hide their activities.The study is on three levels: a medical anthropological exploration of explanations of illness and misfortune; a detailed ethnography of traditional African cosmology and witchcraft; and an examination of recent theoretical issues in anthropology such as the nature of ethnographic fieldwork and the possibility of dialogical or postmodern ethnography.

Communicating Health and Illness

Communicating Health and Illness PDF

Author: Richard Gwyn

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 9780761964759

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In this book Richard Gwyn demonstrates the centrality of discourse analysis to an understanding of health and communication. Focusing on language and communication issues he demonstrates that it is possible to observe and analyze patterns in the ways in which health and illness are represented and articulated by both health professionals and lay people. Communicating Health and Illness: · Explores culturally validated notions of health and sickness and the medicalization of illness · Surveys media representations of health and illness · Considers the metaphoric nature of talk about illness · Contributes to the ongoing debate in relation to narrative based medicine

Life Interpretation and the Sense of Illness within the Human Condition

Life Interpretation and the Sense of Illness within the Human Condition PDF

Author: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 9401007802

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In medicine the understanding and interpretation of the complex reality of illness currently refers either to an organismic approach that focuses on the physical or to a 'holistic' approach that takes into account the patient's human sociocultural involvement. Yet as the papers of this collection show, the suffering human person refers ultimately to his/her existential sphere. Hence, praxis is supplemented by still other perspectives for valuation and interpretation: ethical, spiritual, and religious. Can medicine ignore these considerations or push them to the side as being subjective and arbitrary? Phenomenology/philosophy-of-life recognizes all of the above approaches to be essential facets of the Human Condition (Tymieniecka). This approach holds that all the facets of the Human Condition have equal objectivity and legitimacy. It completes the accepted medical outlook and points the way toward a new `medical humanism'.

The Meaning of Illness

The Meaning of Illness PDF

Author: Mark and Herzlich Auge

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-07-04

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1134346387

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This book is based on collective research carried out during the 1980s. This edition appears ten years after the original publication in French. Since then we have experienced many changes. In the late decade, disciplines have changed, as have the societies being researched. The outbreak of AIDS in Africa and the industrial world is not the least of these major and influential changes. The reader today will be sensitive to these changes and this research maintains its value as an intellectual endeavour and a useful model.

Phenomenology of Illness

Phenomenology of Illness PDF

Author: Havi Carel

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 0199669651

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The experience of illness is a universal and substantial part of human existence. Like death, illness raises important philosophical issues. But unlike death, illness, and in particular the experience of being ill, has received little philosophical attention. This may be because illness is often understood as a physiological process that falls within the domain of medical science, and is thus outside the purview of philosophy. In Phenomenology of Illness Havi Carel argues that the experience of illness has been wrongly neglected by philosophers and proposes to fill the lacuna. Phenomenology of Illness provides a distinctively philosophical account of illness. Using phenomenology, the philosophical method for first-person investigation, Carel explores how illness modifies the ill person's body, values, and world. The aim of Phenomenology of Illness is twofold: to contribute to the understanding of illness through the use of philosophy and to demonstrate the importance of illness for philosophy. Contra the philosophical tendency to resist thinking about illness, Carel proposes that illness is a philosophical tool. Through its pathologising effect, illness distances the ill person from taken for granted routines and habits and reveals aspects of human existence that normally go unnoticed. Phenomenology of Illness develops a phenomenological framework for illness and a systematic understanding of illness as a philosophical tool.

The Meaning of Illness

The Meaning of Illness PDF

Author: S. Kay Toombs

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-11-11

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 9401126305

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This work provides a phenomenological account of the experience of illness and the manner in which meaning is constituted by the patient and the physician. The author provides a detailed account of the way in which illness and body are apprehended differently by doctor and patient. This title has been awarded the first Edwin Goodwin Ballard Prize in Phenomenology.

The Art of Conversation Through Serious Illness

The Art of Conversation Through Serious Illness PDF

Author: Richard McQuellon

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2010-04-29

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 0199750785

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Every day, thousands of people receive a diagnosis of serious, life-threatening illness, and their families and friends suddenly become caregivers. Despite the best of intentions it is not always easy to communicate well under these circumstances, or find deep empathy for something one has never before experienced. When is it best to speak, and when to be silent? How can someone provide real comfort, and how can relationships with loved ones facing serious illness be enhanced in this most difficult time? This book is about how to be an encouraging caregiver and friend under the most difficult circumstances, when the possibility of death is all too real The authors believe that open dialogue must not be avoided until the last minute when opportunities will be limited, but that caregivers and loved ones can embrace this time, mortal time, honestly as a way to sensitively and compassionately engage with those for whom a central fact of life is realized--that all of our lives are time-limited. In The Art of Conversation Through Serious Illness, the authors consider how to best listen to and speak with one facing life-threatening illness, with lessons on being a primary conversation partner, becoming properly empathic and receiving empathy, maintaining everyday conversation, using platitudes appropriately, understanding healthy denial, and talking about dying. Offering bedside guidance usually only available to professionals and peppered with insightful anecdotes from the authors' own experiences, this gentle, succinct book is appropriate for anyone going through this uniquely difficult yet universal life experience.

Explaining Illness

Explaining Illness PDF

Author: Bryan B. Whaley

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 1999-11

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 1135673705

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This volume studies the explanation of illness in various cultural and social contexts. It is essential reading for scholars and practitioners in health communication and health care fields, including nursing, public health, and medicine.

Illness in Context

Illness in Context PDF

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 9042029447

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This book is a contribution to humanistic studies of illness. Medical humanities are by nature cross-disciplinary, and in recent years studies in this field have been recognized as a platform for dialogue between the “two cultures” of the natural sciences and the humanities. Illness in Context is a result of an encounter of several disciplines, including medicine, history and literature. The main stress is on the literary perspectives of the interdisciplinary collaboration. The reading practices highlighting the clinical, phenomenological and archeological approaches to illness take as their point of departure the living text, that is, the literary experience mediated and created by the text. Literature is seen not solely as a medium for the representation of experiences of illness, but also as a historical praxis involved in the forging of our common understanding of illness. In contrast to traditional literary analysis – primarily oriented toward the interpretation of the literary work’s meaning – the project will emphasize description and understanding of how literature itself performs as a means of interpretation of reality. The target group for this book comprises professionals in the various disciplines, and students of health and culture. The ambition is to contribute to teaching in humanistic illness research, and function as a topical resource book that formulates controversial problems in the crucial meeting of medicine and the humanities.

The Illness Narratives

The Illness Narratives PDF

Author: Arthur Kleinman

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2020-10-13

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 154167460X

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From one of America's most celebrated psychiatrists, the book that has taught generations of healers why healing the sick is about more than just diagnosing their illness. Modern medicine treats sick patients like broken machines -- figure out what is physically wrong, fix it, and send the patient on their way. But humans are not machines. When we are ill, we experience our illness: we become scared, distressed, tired, weary. Our illnesses are not just biological conditions, but human ones. It was Arthur Kleinman, a Harvard psychiatrist and anthropologist, who saw this truth when most of his fellow doctors did not. Based on decades of clinical experience studying and treating chronic illness, The Illness Narratives makes a case for interpreting the illness experience of patients as a core feature of doctoring. Before Being Mortal, there was The Illness Narratives. It remains today a prescient and passionate case for bridging the gap between patient and practitioner.