The search for wellbeing in alternative and complementary health practices

Abstract

This article is premised on a need to understand and analyse how those turning to alternative and complementary medicines conceptualise the role of these practices; to ask what kind of 'health' is produced through alternative and complementary medicines and how might the help provided by these practices relate to questions of identity, self and subjectivity? Even though alternative and complementary medicines can be utilised in the face of serious illness, the healing produced through these practices is here argued to transcend physiological health and relate rather to a subjectively assessed sense of 'wellbeing'. In this article, I analyse what this wellbeing entails, in particular, in terms of contemporary understandings of selfhood as well as in relation to the production of appropriate emotions through 'emotion management'. I argue that the wellbeing produced through alternative and complementary health practices can be conceptualised as a means of asserting a particular kind of self as well as a means of negotiating identities offered to people in wider societal discourses and institutions. This article is based on qualitative interviews with both practitioners and users of varied alternative and complementary medicines. The focus is on women's experiences.Keywords: alternative and complementary medicines, emotion work , the self, wellbeing IntroductionThe number of people engaging in different therapeutic practices has been rising rapidly during the past decades. Contemporary Western societies now host a plenitude of varying kinds of therapists and counsellors. Simultaneously, a more therapeutic rhetoric has come to encompass social institutionsWellbeing and alternative and complementary health practices 331

Wellbeing and Welfare: A Psychosocial Analysis of Being Well and Doing Well Enough

“…The sociologist Elizabeth Sointu (2005Sointu ( , 2006 has examined the rise of alternative therapies as part of a transition in subjectivity: 'the increasing popularity of the ideal of wellbeing appears to reflect shifts in perceptions and experiences of individual agency and responsibility. In particular, dominant discourses of wellbeing relate to changes in subjectivity .…”

Penser et percevoir autrement les personnes qui font usage de drogues par injection

“…Puisque la prise de conscience de soi et de ses projets, de ses singularités, de ses goûts, de ses désirs s'effectuent souvent dans le contexte d'échange avec d'autres, dans le dialogue, la personne peut prendre davantage conscience de sa capacité à se réinventer et à se défaire des processus de subjectivisation (Foucault, 1983). Il faut aussi se rappeler comme le souligne Sointu (2006) : qu'« en effet, les stratégies institutionnalisées ne définissent pas comment les personnes interprètent, vivent des expériences ou agissent dans leur vie. Les acteurs ne font uniquement que suivre des règles.…”

“…Ainsi, les gens bricolent autour des valeurs culturelles et sociales prédominantes pour donner un sens à leur conduite (Sointu, 2006). Enfin, l'estime de soi et le respect de soi sont essentiels pour que l'individu puisse faire l'expérience de l'autonomie personnelle (Maillard, 2011).…”

Affecting qualitative health psychology

“…Discussions of concordance with treatment similarly implicate both emotions and feelings: physiotherapeutic regimes frequently interpellate feelings of boredom and fatigue, whilst pharmaceutical regimes may evoke unpleasant feelings associated with the undesired effects of medication; additionally, many interventions enrol emotional responses powerfully constitutive of new and perhaps highly visible subject positions as disabled or ill (Hagger & Orbell, 2006). Studies of the affective may also illuminate aspects of complementary and alternative medicine, which are often said to provide feelings of control (Boon et al, 2000), emotional support (Paltiel et al, 2001) and wellbeing (Sointu, 2006). Finally, of course, it is well-established that emotionality is closely bound up with both the experience and the management of pain (Bullington, 2009;Rhudy, Williams, McCabe, Rambo, & Russell, 2006), and pain -itself a feeling -is a prominent component of many experiences of illness.…”