Cultural poetics of illness and healing
Transcultural Psychiatry October 1, 2023 DOI: 10.1177/13634615231205544 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Proposes that illness experience and its transformation in healing practices can be understood through embodied processes of metaphor and social processes of self-construal via cultural affordances. |
Abstract
This issue of Transcultural Psychiatry presents selected papers from the McGill Advanced Study Institute on “Cultural Poetics of Illness and Healing.” The meeting addressed the cognitive science of language, metaphor, and poiesis from embodied and enactivist perspectives; how cultural affordances, background knowledge, discourse, and practices enable and constrain poiesis; the cognitive and social poetics of symptom and illness experience; and the politics and practice of poetics in healing ritual, psychotherapy, and recovery. This introductory essay outlines an approach to illness experience and its transformation in healing practices that emphasizes embodied processes of metaphor as well as the social processes of self-construal and positioning through material and discursive engagements with the cultural affordances that constitute our local worlds. The approach has implications for theory building, training, and clinical practice in psychiatry.