Cultivating Medical Intentionality: The Phenomenology of Diagnostic Virtuosity in East Asian Medicine.
Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry March 1, 2017 DOI: 10.1007/s11013-016-9505-8 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Ethnography Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Korean medicine practitioners in South Korea |
| Topics | Philosophy of mind |
| Keywords | East asian medicine Korean medicine Medical perception |
| Citations | 11 |
| Key findings | Diagnostic virtuosity in East Asian medicine is gained through embodying a cultivated medical intentionality, facilitated by the notion of "Image" that allows practitioners to somatically conceptualize core medical notions like Yin-Yang. |
Abstract
This study examines the perceptual basis of diagnostic virtuosity in East Asian medicine, combining Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology and an ethnographic investigation of Korean medicine in South Korea. A novice, being exposed to numerous clinical transactions during apprenticeship, organizes perceptual experience that occurs between him or herself and patients. In the process, the fledgling practitioner's body begins to set up a medically-tinged "intentionality" interconnecting his or her consciousness and medically significant qualities in patients. Diagnostic virtuosity is gained when the practitioner embodies a cultivated medical intentionality. In the process of becoming a practitioner imbued with virtuosity, this study focuses on the East Asian notion of "Image" that maximizes the body's perceptual capacity, and minimizes possible reductions by linguistic re-presentation. "Image" enables the practitioner to somatically conceptualize the core notions of East Asian medicine, such as Yin-Yang, and to use them as an embodied litmus as the practitioner's cultivated body instinctively conjures up medical notions at clinical encounters. In line with anthropological critiques of reductionist frameworks that congeal human existential and perceptual vitality within a "scientific" explanatory model, this article attempts to provide an example of various knowing and caring practices, institutionalized external to the culture of science.
Comparable studies
Other qualitative studies on philosophy of mind, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qualitative thematic analysis of the phenomenology of near-death experiences Cardiac arrest survivors | 2018 | Qualitative study | n = 34 |
| Phenomenology and Sequelae of 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine Use Psychiatrists who had taken MDMA | 1992 | Qualitative study | n = 20 |
| A phenomenology of meditation-induced light experiences: traditional buddhist and neurobiological perspectives American Buddhist practitioners | 2014 | Qualitative study | |
| Evoking the ineffable: The phenomenology of extreme sports. Extreme sports participants across three continents, including BASE jumping, big wave... | 2017 | Qualitative study | n = 15 |
| Phenomenology and content of the inhaled N, N-dimethyltryptamine (N, N-DMT) experience. Naturalistic inhaled N,N-DMT experiences posted to the r/DMT Reddit community | 2022 | Qualitative analysis | n = 3,778 |