A contribution to Western genealogies of the self, the corporeality of the Hebrew soul (nefeš) is explored through the lens of ancient medical discourses. Using the example of bitterness as an ethnomedical syndrome, this essay shows how the Hebrew idiom “bitter nefeš” acts as an embodied channel of flux in illness narratives about bodily suffering and healing.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.