Medical Humanities
June 1, 2019
Laurence J. Kirmayer, Ana Gómez-carrillo
104 citations
Psychosomatic explanation in medicine, psychiatry, and psychology creates a social grey zone where conflicts about agency, causality, and moral responsibility arise, reflecting deep-seated dualism in Western concepts of personhood. Illnesses viewed as psychologically mediated tend to be seen as less real or legitimate. New forms of dualism appear in philosophical attacks on Engel's biopsychosocial approach and in the NIMH's Research Domain Criteria program, which favors exclusively biological explanations. The case of resignation syndrome among refugee children in Sweden illustrates how accounting for medically unexplained symptoms raises problems of ascribing agency.
Medical Humanities
September 1, 2022
Riccardo Miceli Mcmillan
25 citations
Psychedelic compounds are regaining interest for their therapeutic effects, and their controversial nature demands bioethical guidance. This paper argues that psychedelic-using communities should be included in bioethical discussions about psychedelic medicalisation. These communities possess epistemic expertise from embodied experiences, enabling them to identify normative considerations others might overlook. They are also uniquely affected by medicalisation, so their needs must be considered. The counterargument that such communities are less capable of deliberative reasoning is acknowledged, but the author proposes that consultation is owed to undo epistemic injustice.
Medical Humanities
October 19, 2020
Peter Stilwell, Christie Stilwell, Brenda Sabo et al.
23 citations
Pain is not just a brain event but emerges from interactions between a person's body, mind, and environment, according to enactive theory. This paper applies that framework to pain, critiquing dualist and reductionist approaches in medicine. The authors analyze pain-related metaphors used by clinicians in recorded appointments and interviews, classifying them and connecting them to enactive theory. Five paintings visually depict these metaphors, showing how clinical language can shape patients' pain and agency. The authors argue that clinicians often overlook how their metaphors become enacted through treatment, and suggest that intentionally shaping these metaphors could improve pain management.
Medical Humanities
December 4, 2020
E. Semino, Z. Demjén, Luke C. Collins
7 citations
A literary linguistic framework for analyzing fictional characters can illuminate how people who hear voices perceive those voices as social agents. The authors propose a Characterisation Model of Voices that captures varying degrees of person-ness voices may possess. Applying the model to two interview accounts from voice-hearers in a psychosis intervention reveals nuanced differences in how voices are experienced as character-like. This approach offers insights into the phenomenology of voice-hearing and may inform therapeutic interventions.
Medical Humanities
January 6, 2025
Alex Dymock, Zoë Dubus
4 citations
This article argues that future research on psychedelics and sexuality must account for sexuality as culturally produced, historically contingent, and geographically specific. Drawing on three recent studies showing a positive connection between psychedelic use and sexual well-being, the authors contend that ignoring social and cultural contexts undermines reliability and efficacy. The psychedelics field has faced ethical dilemmas regarding sexual interactions in therapeutic and underground settings, yet clinical research rarely reports on sexuality. Gendered dynamics of sex and sexuality, and their impact on perceptions of therapeutic repair versus enhancement, have received scant attention. The article outlines key concerns and priorities for research in a post-#MeToo era.
Medical Humanities
June 1, 2007
J Cole
2 citations
Ludwig Wittgenstein, though known as an analytical philosopher, made observations that are relevant to cognitive neuroscience, particularly regarding the inner and outer, language and sensation, and the embodied nature of emotion and communication. His insights apply to neurological conditions like pain, Capgras' Syndrome, and spinal cord injury, as well as movement sense, will, and action. Wittgenstein did not conduct empirical science but used observation and introspection to explore lived experience in ways now being approached empirically. The paper argues that his work, despite his belief that science leads philosophy into darkness, offers valuable perspectives for understanding neurological impairment.
Medical Humanities
December 24, 2025
Shambo Samrat Samajdar, Shashank R Joshi
Clinical evaluation increasingly relies on digital diagnostics and algorithmic protocols, which risk reducing the clinician-patient encounter to an impersonal transaction. This essay proposes the concept of sacred attention as a complement to the biomedical gaze: a cultivated, ethically attuned mode of presence that reclaims the human depth of care. Drawing on Rabindranath Tagore's vision of ananda dhara (the eternal stream of bliss) and Adi Shankaracharya's non-dualist ontology, it reframes clinical empathy as a contemplative practice rather than an affective impulse. Sacred attention can recontextualize the physical examination as an embodied ritual and be integrated into medical education to cultivate reflective awareness and relational depth.
Medical Humanities
June 1, 2014
Allan Beveridge
This paper examines the madness of the nineteenth-century French writer Gerard de Nerval, focusing on his account of mental disturbance, his response to the psychiatric profession, and his reaction to being diagnosed as insane. It considers his autobiographical novella Aurelia, begun at the suggestion of his alienist, Dr Emile Blanche, while he was still an asylum inmate. Nerval's story raises questions about whether madness is a mystical experience revealing truths about spiritual worlds inaccessible to the 'sane', whether psychiatry fails to understand it by reducing it to scientific reason, or whether romanticizing insanity makes extravagant claims for a disturbing experience. The paper also explores the relationship between madness and recovery, and whether the language of madness can be decoded to unveil profound truths or is merely empty speech acts.
Medical Humanities
December 1, 2010
C Ottomann, P L Stollwerck, H Maier et al.
Joseph Beuys, a major 20th-century artist, experienced a life-changing trauma in March 1943 when his dive bomber crashed in Crimea. This event, known as the 'Tartar Legend' or 'Tartar Myth', profoundly shaped his artistic career. Beuys perceived his rescue as a "rebirth" and developed a new consciousness that ignored boundaries, creating visions for the healing of all mankind. The abstract contends that Beuys did not bring society to a visible turning point toward "the healing of the world," but his work remains important as a record of strength arising from trauma and a passionate commitment to life.