Abstract
Since early in this century researchers in philosophy, psychiatry, neurology, and internal medicine have applied a phenomenological approach to investigate how human beings experience the body in normal and morbid states. Their research demonstrates characteristic transformations in human existence accompanying various diseases and disabilities. E. Straus [39, 41], F.J.J. Buytendijk [12], V. Von Gebsattel [45], V. Von Weizsäcker [46], H. Plügge [32, 33], and M. Boss [6] are the principal European pioneers who marked out this field of study, variously using such designations as ‘medical anthropology’, ‘anthropological physiology’, and ‘phenomenology of medicine’. R.M. Zaner [48, 49], O. Sacks [35], M.A. Murphy [30], S.F. Spicker [37, 38], D. Moss [25–27], and H. Jonas [18] represent an expanding circle of researchers continuing these directions on the American scene, again at the interface between philosophy and the medical clinic.
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Notes
Another good example of a “holistic starting point” with subsequent splitting of the mind-body unity is Th. Von Uexküll’s notion of Situationskreis, [22] wherein mind and body are regarded as different aspects of one situational circle. But by his application of the biopsychosocial model, Uexküll splits this circle so that each distinct aspect degenerates into a separate entity.
The narrower discipline which is labeled “anthropology” in Great Britain and America is called “ethnology” by the Europeans.
We refer to the lifeworld, the world of everyday social interaction and practical projects, as described by Husserl [5] and Schutz [18].
For extensive discussions of lived time and lived space, refer to Erwin Straus ([19], pp. 3-59) and Boss ([2], pp. 86-100).
Unheimlichkeit may be translated as “creepy” or “sinister”.
Because of limitations of space, we did not address a further dimension of the objective body; the body as biological organism, described by the sciences of biology, chemistry and physiology [19, 20, 26]. This is a crucial dimension of the “objective body” on which the scientifically-trained physician focuses in treating patients. Therefore, its role in medical anthropology is central. In order to develop this aspect of the body, we would have to lay bare the interconnections between the body which the physicians sees and touches (i.e., the objective body described above) and the body about which the physician thinks (i.e., the biological organism as described by physical science). We fully recognize the centrality of the biological organism in any adequate medical anthropology.
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Moss, D. (1992). Obesity, Objectification, and Identity: The Encounter with the Body as an Object in Obesity. In: Leder, D. (eds) The Body in Medical Thought and Practice. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 43. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7924-7_11
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