Breaking Down: A Phenomenology of Disability

Diedrich, Lisa

doi:10.1353/lm.2001.0019

Cited by 46 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Western cultural/philosophical thought also emphasizes the importance of the individual self, especially as it is distinguished from the other, but as disability [ 55 - 57 ] and feminist [ 58 - 60 ] scholars have pointed out, by and large the valued self is one that is pure, clean, boundaried, and healthy. Thus, on an individual level, each person yearns for a perfectly healthy body immune to fragmentation and corruption [ 61 , 62 ].…”

Section: Contamination and Othering In Relation To Health And Illnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Protection of the desirable self from being confused with or engulfed by the threatening other occurs through the concept of borders, which establish a self that is fixed and categorical [ 30 , 58 , 62 ]. To allow permeability in any form, including acknowledgment of shared vulnerability and suffering, is menacing because it leads to a destabilization of the healthy self [ 57 , 68 ].…”

Section: Contamination and Othering In Relation To Health And Illnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Walking a mile in their patients' shoes: empathy and othering in medical students' education

Shapiro

2008

Philos Ethics Humanit Med

182

165

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One of the major tasks of medical educators is to help maintain and increase trainee empathy for patients. Yet research suggests that during the course of medical training, empathy in medical students and residents decreases. Various exercises and more comprehensive paradigms have been introduced to promote empathy and other humanistic values, but with inadequate success. This paper argues that the potential for medical education to promote empathy is not easy for two reasons: a) Medical students and residents have complex and mostly unresolved emotional responses to the universal human vulnerability to illness, disability, decay, and ultimately death that they must confront in the process of rendering patient care b) Modernist assumptions about the capacity to protect, control, and restore run deep in institutional cultures of mainstream biomedicine and can create barriers to empathic relationships. In the absence of appropriate discourses about how to emotionally manage distressing aspects of the human condition, it is likely that trainees will resort to coping mechanisms that result in distance and detachment. This paper suggests the need for an epistemological paradigm that helps trainees develop a tolerance for imperfection in self and others; and acceptance of shared emotional vulnerability and suffering while simultaneously honoring the existence of difference. Reducing the sense of anxiety and threat that are now reinforced by the dominant medical discourse in the presence of illness will enable trainees to learn to emotionally contain the suffering of their patients and themselves, thus providing a psychologically sound foundation for the development of true empathy.

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Section: Contamination and Othering In Relation To Health And Illnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Contamination and Othering In Relation To Health And Illnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Walking a mile in their patients' shoes: empathy and othering in medical students' education

Shapiro

2008

Philos Ethics Humanit Med

182

165

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Nonetheless, they miss countless other ways in which bodies inhabit the world. Descriptions of “inconspicuous, unobtrusive, and nonobstinate” (Diedrich , 212) forms of belonging fall short. They do not account for embodied feelings of disorientation, unease, queerness, misfit, alienation, or jarring incompatibility.…”

Section: Being At Homementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In recent years, a rich body of work has brought to light the significance of phenomenology's focus on first‐person descriptive accounts of embodied experience for the study of such diverse phenomena as pain (Svenaeus ; Kusch and Ratcliffe ), psychopathology and illness (Carel Ratcliffe ; Carel ; Ratcliffe ; Fernandez forthcoming‐a), phobic disorders (Jacobson ), sexed embodiment and sexual difference (Heinämaa ; Zeiler and Guntram ), disability (Diedrich ; Salamon ; Abrams ; St. Pierre ), pregnancy and childbirth (LaChance Adams and Burcher ), and aging and death (Cuffari ; Heinämaa ; Weiss ). Phenomenologists have articulated the ways in which these particular aspects of human experience transform foundational conceptions of selfhood, relationality, belonging, and affectivity.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Being at Home: A Feminist Phenomenology of Disorientation in Illness

Lajoie¹

2019

Hypatia

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This article explores the relation among illness, home, and belonging. Through a feminist phenomenological framework, I describe the disorientations of being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and living with mental illness. This research anticipates the consequences of illness and serious (bodily) disorientations for a conception of belonging as seamless body–world compatibility. Instead, this article examines how the (in)stability of bodily dwellings in experiences of disorientation can suggest ways of being in the world that are more attentive to interdependency, unpredictability, and change in human experience. I argue that these types of dwellings function as a more capacious and apposite metaphor to account for variations in belonging. This discussion outlines the ethical importance of building worlds that make room for different ways of being at home in and through our interactions with others. Although my discussion does not supply norms for ethical action, I contend that a feminist phenomenology of illness generates saliences and illuminates sensibilities that can transform our ways of being with others.

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“…Here, his ideas about ‘scotoma’ (see below) emerge. The book has been subjected to many scholarly studies (7–11), mainly because of Sacks’ ‘holistic’ reflections on the body–mind relationships. Most recently, the deficits, as he described them in the book, have been diagnosed as a ‘functional paralysis’ (11), a diagnosis Sacks did not agree with (12).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Oliver Sacks and migraine

2016

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Background Oliver Sacks (1933-2015) published a large number of books on a variety of neurological topics. Of these, numerous copies have been sold and they probably serve as the only or main source of information on neurological diseases for many persons without a medical background. His first book was on migraine and in his subsequent books many descriptions of migraine can be found, mainly those of auras. Methods We explored the descriptions of migraine in Sacks' work in order to evaluate the image of migraine offered to the readers. Conclusion Oliver Sacks gave wonderful descriptions of migraine auras, but hardly any of migraine headache. Furthermore, he described rare auras such as 'amusia' and olfactory auras. Overall, this makes his descriptions of migraine not very useful to serve as medical information for laypersons. Oliver Sacks, however, wrote great literature.

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Breaking Down: A Phenomenology of Disability

Cited by 46 publications

References 13 publications

Walking a mile in their patients' shoes: empathy and othering in medical students' education

Walking a mile in their patients' shoes: empathy and othering in medical students' education

Being at Home: A Feminist Phenomenology of Disorientation in Illness

Oliver Sacks and migraine

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