The Body in Medical Thought and Practice (Philosophy and Medicine Book 43)

In the second half of the 20th century, the body has become a central theme of intellectual debate. How should we perceive the human body? Is it best understood biologically, experientially, culturally? How do social institutions exercise power over the body and determine norms of health and behavior? The answers arrived at by phenomenologists, social theorists, and feminists have radically challenged our cenventional notions of the body dating back to 17th century Cartesian thought. This is the first volume to systematically explore the range of contemporary thought concerning the body and draw out its crucial implications for medicine. Its authors suggest that many of the problems often found in modern medicine - dehumanized treatment, overspecialization, neglect of the mind's healing resources - are directly traceable to medicine's outmoded concepts of the body. New and exciting alternatives are proposed by some of the foremost physicians and philosophers working in the medical humanities today. Front Matter....Pages i-viii Introduction....Pages 1-12 Front Matter....Pages 13-13 A Tale of Two Bodies: The Cartesian Corpse and the Lived Body....Pages 17-35 Why Aren’t More Doctors Phenomenologists?....Pages 37-47 Foucault’s Political Body in Medical Praxis....Pages 51-68 On the Body in Medical Self-Care and Holistic Medicine....Pages 69-84 A Confucian Perspective on Embodiment....Pages 87-100 Parted Bodies, Departed Souls: The Body in Ancient Medicine and Anatomy....Pages 101-122 Front Matter....Pages 123-123 The Body in Multiple Sclerosis: A Patient’s Perspective....Pages 127-137 Psychosomatics, The Lived Body, and Anthropological Medicine: Concerning a Case of Atopic Dermatitis....Pages 139-154 The Body with AIDS: A Post-Structuralist Approach....Pages 155-176 Obesity, Objectification, and Identity: The Encounter with the Body as an Object in Obesity....Pages 179-196 Eating Disorders: The Feminist Challenge to the Concept of Pathology....Pages 197-213 Breasted Experience: The Look and the Feeling....Pages 215-230 Front Matter....Pages 231-231 The Body of the Future....Pages 233-249 Back Matter....Pages 251-260