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Phenomenology and its application in medicine

Carel, Havi

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Authors

Havi Carel



Abstract

Phenomenology is a useful methodology for describing and ordering experience. As such, phenomenology can be specifically applied to the first person experience of illness in order to illuminate this experience and enable health care providers to enhance their understanding of it. However, this approach has been underutilized in the philosophy of medicine as well as in medical training and practice. This paper demonstrates the usefulness of phenomenology to clinical medicine. In order to describe the experience of illness, we need a phenomenological approach that gives the body a central role and acknowledges the primacy of perception. I present such a phenomenological method and show how it could usefully illuminate the experience of illness through a set of concepts taken from Merleau-Ponty. His distinction between the biological body and the body as lived, analysis of the habitual body, and the notions of motor intentionality and intentional arc are used to capture the experience of illness. I then discuss the applications this approach could have in medicine. These include narrowing the gap between objective assessments of well-being in illness and subjective experiences which are varied and diverse; developing a more attuned dialogue between physicians and patients based on a thick understanding of illness; developing research methods that are informed by phenomenology and thus go beyond existing qualitative methods; and providing medical staff with a concrete understanding of the impact of illness on the life-world of patients. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

Citation

Carel, H. (2011). Phenomenology and its application in medicine. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 32(1), 33-46. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11017-010-9161-x

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date Feb 1, 2011
Deposit Date Sep 20, 2010
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics
Print ISSN 1386-7415
Publisher Springer (part of Springer Nature)
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 32
Issue 1
Pages 33-46
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s11017-010-9161-x
Keywords embodiment, disease, illness, phenomenology, experience of illness, medical training, qualitative healthcare research
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/965462
Publisher URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11017-010-9161-x
Additional Information Additional Information : The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com

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