“Subject to pain: Ricoeur, Foucault, and emplotting discourses in an illness narrative”

Barker, Seamus

doi:10.1057/s41286-017-0035-9

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…The tension between a given interpretation and the surplus of meaning -between centrifugal and centripetal forces -makes interpretation an iterative process: our interpretations are shaped by our prior expectations, and those expectations are then revised in light of new information. Furthermore, this revision is intimately bound with our responses to our interpretations -the use we make of that information shapes what is most salient in our updated expectations (Bakhtin 1981, p. 282;Barker 2017;Bernstein 1982).…”

Section: The Hermeneutical Circlementioning

confidence: 95%

“…On this picture, symptomatic "complaints may be mapped directly onto sensations and pathological processes" (Good and Good 1981, p. 165). There is an underlying biological process, which reliably produces a certain experience; the way that experience is described by the ill person may be subject to certain 'distortions' of culture, social situation, or linguistic to legitimise them as forms of suffering, and to exculpate themselves from responsibility for the suffering (Barker 2017;Salmon 2000).…”

Section: Failure Of Symptom-token Recognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Instead, from the clinical counter they seek acknowledgement and legitimation of their suffering (Nettleton 2006 ; Salmon 2000 ). Patients whose experiences are not adequately recognised as symptoms worry about being a ‘fraud’, ‘time waster’, ‘hysteric’, ‘fake’ or ‘hypochondriac’ (Nettleton 2006 ); they seek naming of symptoms to legitimise them as forms of suffering, and to exculpate themselves from responsibility for the suffering (Barker 2017 ; Salmon 2000 ).…”

Section: The Functions Of Symptomsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The hermeneutics of symptoms

Wardrope

Reuber

2022

Med Health Care and Philos

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The clinical encounter begins with presentation of an illness experience; but throughout that encounter, something else is constructed from it – a symptom. The symptom is a particular interpretation of that experience, useful for certain purposes in particular contexts. The hermeneutics of medicine – the study of the interpretation of human experience in medical terms – has largely taken the process of symptom-construction to be transparent, focussing instead on how constellations of symptoms are interpreted as representative of particular conditions. This paper examines the hermeneutical activity of symptom-construction more closely. I propose a fourfold account of the clinical function of symptoms: as theoretical entities; as tools for communication; as guides to palliative intervention; and as candidates for medical explanation or intervention. I also highlight roles they might play in illness experience. I use this framework to discuss four potential failures of symptom-interpretation: failure of symptom-type and symptom-token recognition; loss of the complete picture of illness experience through overwhelming emphasis on its symptomatic interpretation; and intersubjective feedback effects of symptom description altering the ill person’s own perceptions of their phenomenal experience. I conclude with some suggestions of potential remedies for failures in the process of symptom-construction.

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Section: The Hermeneutical Circlementioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Failure Of Symptom-token Recognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Functions Of Symptomsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The hermeneutics of symptoms

Wardrope

Reuber

2022

Med Health Care and Philos

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“…They collectively examine how forms of subjectivity are created, maintained and transformed through experiences of breast cancer (Greenhalgh 2017), traumatic brain injury (Mäkelä 2017), uncertain futures in the context of advanced cancer (Kenny, Broom, Kirby, Wyld and Lwin 2017), chronic pain (Barker 2017), and complex, existential angst and extreme tiredness caused by long-time caring for close elderly family members (Danely 2017). The papers in this collection chart narratives through which subjectivities are formed, reshaped and contested in the context of challenging illness experiences.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%