Developing and Sustaining a Medical Humanities Program

2016 ◽  
pp. 9942-10735
Author(s):  
P Ravi Shankar
Keyword(s):  
Medical Humanities

Medicine and Empathy in Contemporary British Fiction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Whitehead
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Medical Humanities ◽  
Illness Experience ◽  
Contemporary Fiction ◽  
Theoretical Argument ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Night Time ◽  
British Fiction ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Relations Of Power

This book offers a critique of the dominant understanding and deployment of empathy in the mainstream medical humanities. Drawing on feminist theory, it positions empathy not as something that one has or lacks, and needs to accrue, but as something that one does and that is embedded within structural, institutional and cultural relations of power. It aims to provide a critically informed definition of empathy, drawing on phenomenology, in order to counter the vagueness of the term as it has often been used. It questions, too, the assumption that empathy is limited to the clinical relation, looking to a broader and more encompassing definition of the ‘medical’. Combining theoretical argument with literary case studies of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Pat Barker’s Life Class, Ian McEwan’s Saturday, Aminatta Forna’s The Memory of Love and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, this book contends that contemporary fiction is not a vehicle for accessing another’s illness experience, but itself engages critically with the question of empathy and its limits. The volume marks a key contribution to the rapidly evolving field of the critical medical humanities.

Fictions of the Human Right to Health: Writing Against the Postcolonial Exotic in Western Medicine

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosemary J. Jolly
Keyword(s):  
Health Research ◽  
Western Medicine ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Medical Humanities ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
The Body ◽  
Health And Wellness ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Cultural Specificity ◽  
The Social

The last decade has witnessed far greater attention to the social determinants of health in health research, but literary studies have yet to address, in a sustained way, how narratives addressing issues of health across postcolonial cultural divides depict the meeting – or non-meeting – of radically differing conceptualisations of wellness and disease. This chapter explores representations of illness in which Western narrators and notions of the body are juxtaposed with conceptualisations of health and wellness entirely foreign to them, embedded as the former are in assumptions about Cartesian duality and the superiority of scientific method – itself often conceived of as floating (mysteriously) free from its own processes of enculturation and their attendant limits. In this respect my work joins Volker Scheid’s, in this volume, in using the capacity of critical medical humanities to reassert the cultural specificity of what we have come to know as contemporary biomedicine, often assumed to be

Voices and Visions: Mind, Body and Affect in Medieval Writing

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corinne Saunders
Keyword(s):  
Medical Humanities ◽  
Family Care ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Disease Treatment ◽  
History Of Disease ◽  
Health And Illness ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Texts

A properly critical medical humanities is also a historically grounded medical humanities. Such historical grounding requires taking a long cultural perspective, going beyond traditional medical history – typically the history of disease, treatment and practice – to trace the origins and development of the ideas that underpin medicine in its broadest sense – ideas concerning the most fundamental aspects of human existence: health and illness, body and mind, gender and family, care and community. Historical sources can only go so far in illuminating such topics; we must also look to other cultural texts, and in particular literary texts, which, through their imaginative worlds, provide crucial insights into cultural and intellectual attitudes, experience and creativity. Reading from a critical medical humanities perspective requires not only cultural archaeology across a range of discourses, but also putting past and present into conversation, to discover continuities and contrasts with later perspectives. Medical humanities research is illuminated by cultural and literary studies, and also brings to them new ways of seeing; the relation is dynamic. This chapter explores the ways mind, body and affect are constructed and intersect in medieval thought and literature, with a particular focus on how voice-hearing and visionary experience are portrayed and understood.

Holism, Chinese Medicine and Systems Ideologies: Rewriting the Past to Imagine the Future

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Volker Scheid
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Chinese Medicine ◽  
Medical Humanities ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Us ◽  
Shared Objective ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter explores the articulations that have emerged over the last half century between various types of holism, Chinese medicine and systems biology. Given the discipline’s historical attachments to a definition of ‘medicine’ that rather narrowly refers to biomedicine as developed in Europe and the US from the eighteenth century onwards, the medical humanities are not the most obvious starting point for such an inquiry. At the same time, they do offer one advantage over neighbouring disciplines like medical history, anthropology or science and technology studies for someone like myself, a clinician as well as a historian and anthropologist: their strong commitment to the objective of facilitating better medical practice. This promise furthermore links to the wider project of critique, which, in Max Horkheimer’s definition of the term, aims at change and emancipation in order ‘to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them’. If we take the critical medical humanities as explicitly affirming this shared objective and responsibility, extending the discipline’s traditional gaze is not a burden but becomes, in fact, an obligation.

Drowning in negativism, self-hate, doubt, madness: Linguistic insights into Sylvia Plath’s experience of depression

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zsófia Demjén
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Medical Humanities ◽  
Sylvia Plath ◽  
Individual Experience ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Linguistic Methods ◽  
Linguistic Approach

This paper demonstrates how a range of linguistic methods can be harnessed in pursuit of a deeper understanding of the ‘lived experience’ of psychological disorders. It argues that such methods should be applied more in medical contexts, especially in medical humanities. Key extracts from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath are examined, as a case study of the experience of depression. Combinations of qualitative and quantitative linguistic methods, and inter- and intra-textual comparisons are used to consider distinctive patterns in the use of metaphor, personal pronouns and (the semantics of) verbs, as well as other relevant aspects of language. Qualitative techniques provide in-depth insights, while quantitative corpus methods make the analyses more robust and ensure the breadth necessary to gain insights into the individual experience. Depression emerges as a highly complex and sometimes potentially contradictory experience for Plath, involving both a sense of apathy and inner turmoil. It involves a sense of a split self, trapped in a state that one cannot overcome, and intense self-focus, a turning in on oneself and a view of the world that is both more negative and more polarized than the norm. It is argued that a linguistic approach is useful beyond this specific case.

scholarly journals Hearing spiritually significant voices: A phenomenological survey and taxonomy

2020 ◽  
pp. medhum-2020-012021
Author(s):  
Christopher C H Cook ◽  
Adam Powell ◽  
Ben Alderson-Day ◽  
Angela Woods
Keyword(s):  
Medical Humanities ◽  
Adult Life ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Pastoral Work ◽  
Auditory Verbal Hallucinations ◽  
Single Voice ◽  
The Voice

Whereas previous research in the medical humanities has tended to neglect theology and religious studies, these disciplines sometimes have a very important contribution to make. The hearing of spiritually significant voices provides a case in point. The context, content and identity of these voices, all of which have typically not been seen as important in the assessment of auditory–verbal hallucinations (AVHs) within psychiatry, are key to understanding their spiritual significance. A taxonomy of spiritually significant voices is proposed, which takes into account frequency, context, affect and identity of the voice. In a predominantly Christian sample of 58 people who reported having heard spiritually significant voices, most began in adult life and were infrequent experiences. Almost 90% reported that the voice was divine in identity and approximately one-third were heard in the context of prayer. The phenomenological characteristics of these voices were different from those in previous studies of voice hearing (AVHs). Most comprised a single voice; half were auditory; and a quarter were more thought-like (the rest being a mixture). Only half were characterful, and one-third included commands or prompts. The voices were experienced positively and as meaningful. The survey has implications for both clinical and pastoral work. The phenomenology of spiritually significant voices may be confused with that of psychopathology, thus potentially leading to misdiagnosis of normal religious experiences. The finding of meaning in content and context may be important in voice hearing more widely, and especially in coping with negative or distressing voices.

scholarly journals May I have your uterus? The contribution of considering complexities preceding live uterus transplantation

2021 ◽  
pp. medhum-2020-011864
Author(s):  
Lisa Guntram
Keyword(s):  
Medical Humanities ◽  
Assisted Reproductive Technologies ◽  
Reproductive Technologies ◽  
In Vitro Fertilisation ◽  
Medical Innovation ◽  
Uterus Transplantation ◽  
Ethical Debate ◽  
Care And Support ◽  
Different Dimensions

Uterus transplantation combined with in vitro fertilisation (IVF) (henceforth called UTx-IVF) as a treatment for infertility caused by an absence or malfunction of the uterus is advancing. About 50 transplantations have been conducted worldwide and at least 14 children have been born—9 of them by women taking part in a Swedish research project on UTx-IVF. The Swedish research protocol initially stated that the potential recipient must ‘have her own donor’ who is preferably related to the recipient. But what does it mean to ask someone for a uterus? What challenges does this question instigate? And what norms may it enact? In this article, I explore how 10 women—who have considered, and sometimes pursued, UTx-IVF—describe their experiences of searching for a donor. I aim to show how an analysis of such accounts can help us unpack some of the specific relational and gendered dimensions of UTx-IVF and by doing so enrich discussions of risks, benefits, care and support in UTx-IVF. Drawing on research in social sciences and medical humanities that has demonstrated how assisted reproductive technologies and organ donation can provoke social and familial conundrums, with respect to such topics as embodiment and identity, I present three patterns that describe different dimensions of the interviewees’ quest for a uterus donor. I discuss the negotiations that took place, how expectations unfolded and how entanglements were managed as the interviewees considered asking someone for a donation. Such an examination, I suggest, contributes to make care and support more attuned to the experiences and entanglements that UTx-IVF entails for those pursuing it. This will become increasingly important if (or when) UTx-IVF becomes part of general healthcare. To conclude, I problematise responsibilities and relational challenges in medical innovation, and in this way provide insights into how the ethical debate over UTx-IVF can broaden its scope.

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