Reversing the medical humanities

Abstract

The paper offers the concept of reversing the medical humanities. In agreement with the call from Kristeva et al to recognise the bidirectionality of the medical humanities, I propose moving beyond debates of attitude and aptitude in the application and engagement (either friendly or critical) of humanities to/in medicine, by considering a reversal of the directions of epistemic movement (a reversal of the flow of knowledge). I situate my proposal within existing articulations of the field found in the medical humanities meta-literature, pointing to a gap in the current terrain. I then develop the proposal by unfolding three reasons why we might gain something from exploring a reversed knowledge flow. First, a reversed knowledge flow seems to be an inherent—but still to be articulated—possibility in medical humanities and thus provides an opportunity for more knowledge. Second, the current unidirectionality of the field is founded on an inconsistency in the depiction of the connection between medicine and humanities, which risks creating the very divide that medical humanities set out to bridge. Practising a reversal may help avoid this divide. And third, a reversal might help rebalance the internal epistemic power, so as to motivate less external scepticism and in turn displace more external epistemic power towards medical humanities. I end the paper with a remark on precursors for a reversal, and ideas for where to go from here.

Phenomenological physiotherapy: extending the concept of bodily intentionality

“…2019; Køster and Fernandez 2021; Zahavi and Loidolt 2021; de Haan 2020), nursing (Zahavi and Martiny 2019), medical humanities (Kristeva et al . 2018; Scott-Fordsmand 2020), clinical medicine (Stilwell and Harman 2021), and neuropathology (Gallagher and Cole 1995). Even earlier, cognitive scientists and philosophers started exploring the possibilities of how phenomenological or, more generally, human-perspective based investigations can integrate factors commonly studied by empirical science from a third-person detached perspective (eg, Gallagher 2003; Merleau-Ponty 1963; Merleau-Ponty 2012; Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 2016; for an overview, see Gallagher and Zahavi 2020, 34–50; Zahavi 2019a, 103–140).…”

“…Gallagher and Zahavi 2020, 36–37; Zahavi 2019a, 132–135; in the context of medical humanities, cf. Scott-Fordsmand 2020). By analysing physiotherapeutical problems and situations, we elaborate on the philosophical and cognitive-scientific understanding of embodiment and extend the concept of bodily intentionality to domains in which it has not been discussed.…”

Weak inclusion of the medical humanities in medical education: a qualitative study among Danish medical students

“…In the 1970s and '80 s, the psychiatrist George L. Engel discussed the need for medicine to adopt a more inclusive scientific model, the bio-psychosocial model, to avoid "producing" graduates deficient in personcentred-and empathic care [5,6]. Contemporary bioethicists and medical humanists continue to support this call, pointing to the two-fold nature of medicine, biomedical and humanistic, and advocating for applying the same scientific rigor to the psychosocial model as customarily applied to the biomedical [4,[7][8][9]. Being attentive to dehumanizing tendencies in some areas of contemporary health care, and a burgeoning awareness of some of the shortcomings of the positivist influence on medical practice, medical educators have come to acknowledge the importance of exposing future medical practitioners to teaching subjects that inculcate "humaneness", promoting empathy and compassion, and helping them develop reflective, critical, curious and creative faculties [10,11].…”

“…The meta-literature on the field (dealing with what medical humanities are or should be) provides several understandings of medical humanities and no broad agreement on definitions, demarcations or gains exists. Positioning subdivisions of traditions in the field, Scott-Fordsmand [9] lists three major branches referred to in the meta-literature of the field: a pedagogical/empathyfocused branch of Medical Humanities (humanities have a utilitarian, supportive function), Critical Medical Humanities (humanities have a disruptive, critical function) and Health Humanities (humanities have a function of broad inclusion within health and social care, education and research). Whilst acknowledging, in line with Scott-Fordsmand, that any boundaries made within this field are blurred, this paper focuses on the first, the pedagogical/empathy-focused branch of medical humanities, or on what Bleakley [23] describes as "…education for empathy or tolerance of the 'other'" (p. 960).…”

“…Whilst acknowledging, in line with Scott-Fordsmand, that any boundaries made within this field are blurred, this paper focuses on the first, the pedagogical/empathy-focused branch of medical humanities, or on what Bleakley [23] describes as "…education for empathy or tolerance of the 'other'" (p. 960). This approach was integrated into medical teaching programs in North American medical schools during the first decades of the twentieth century to counter the scientification of medicine and what had become a too narrow and reductive focus on medicine as biomedicine [9,23,24]. As stated by Shapiro et al [25] "an important goal of medical humanities is to reconceptualize health care, through influencing students and practitioners to query their own attitudes and behaviors, while offering a nuanced and integrated perspective on the fundamental aspects of illness, suffering and healing" (p. 192).…”