Authors:
- A unique approach applying Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy to psychosomatics
- Covers and combines philosophy and health care praxis issues
- Advances the understanding of complex psychosomatic symptoms
- Provides a point of departure for a badly needed alternative approach to dealing with patients with psychosomatic issues
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Philosophy (BRIEFSPHILOSOPH)
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
About this book
This book is a contribution to the understanding of psychosomatic health problems. Inspired by the work of the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a phenomenological theory of psychosomatics is worked out as an alternative to traditional, biomedical thinking. The patient who presents somatic symptoms with no clearly discernible lesion or dysfunction presents a problem to the traditional health care system. These symptoms are medically unexplainable, constituting an anomaly for the materialistic understanding of ill health that underlies the practice of modern medicine. The traditional biomedical model is not appropriate for understanding a number of health issues that we call “psychosomatic” and for this reason, biomedical theory and practice must be complemented by another theoretical understanding in order to adequately grasp the psychosomatic problematic. This book establishes a complementary understanding of psychosomatic ill health in terms of a non-reductionistic model allowing for the (psychosomatic) expression of the lived body. A thorough presentation of the work Merleau-Ponty is followed by the author’s application of his thinking to the phenomenon of psychosomatic pathology.
Keywords
- Holistic Health
- Medically unexplained symptons
- Merleau-Ponty on Expression
- Merleau-Ponty on Meaning
- Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology
- Modern Theories of Health
- Phenomenological theory of psychosomatics
- Phenomenology of Perception
- Practice of modern medicins
- The Visible and the Invisible
- Work of phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty
- materialistic understanding of health problems
- understanding of psychosomatic pathology
Authors and Affiliations
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Ersta Sköndal University College, Stockholm, Sweden
Jennifer Bullington
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Expression of the Psychosomatic Body from a Phenomenological Perspective
Authors: Jennifer Bullington
Series Title: SpringerBriefs in Philosophy
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6498-9
Publisher: Springer Dordrecht
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: The Author(s) 2013
Softcover ISBN: 978-94-007-6497-2Published: 05 April 2013
eBook ISBN: 978-94-007-6498-9Published: 20 March 2013
Series ISSN: 2211-4548
Series E-ISSN: 2211-4556
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VII, 105
Topics: Phenomenology, Health Psychology, Public Health