Illness As A Work Of Thought

Illness as a Work of Thought is a practical application of Foucault's archaeological and genealogical methods of the study of illness and modernity. From medicine and psychiatry to psychology and the social sciences, Monica Greco explores what the history of these different disciplines contributes to what we understand by the term 'psychosomatics' and analyses how the study of psychosomatic illness can transform the way we think of illness, subjectivity and the ethics and politics of health.

Illness as a Work of Thought is a practical application of Foucault's archaeological and genealogical methods of the study of illness and modernity. From medicine and psychiatry to psychology and the social sciences, Monica Greco explores what the history of these different disciplines contributes to what we understand by the term 'psychosomatics' and analyses how the study of psychosomatic illness can transform the way we think of illness, subjectivity and the ethics and politics of health.

Presents evidence from medical journals that beliefs, thoughts, and feelings can cure the body and shows readers how to apply this knowledge in their own lives. -- provided by publisher.

The universal quest to create cosmologies – to comprehend the relationship between mind and world - is inevitably limited by the social, cultural and historical perspective of the observer, in this instance western psychoanalysis. In this book Michael Robbins attempts to transcend such contextual limitations by putting forward a primordial form of mental activity that co-exists alongside thought and is of equal importance in human affairs. This book challenges the western assumption that knowledge is synonymous with rational thought and that the aspect of mind that is not thought is immature, irrational, regressive and pathological. Robbins illustrates the central role of primordial mental activity in spiritual cultures analogous to that of thought in western culture as well as its significant contributions to numerous other phenomena including dreaming, language, creativity, shamanism and psychosis. In addition to his extensive clinical experience as a psychoanalyst Robbins draws on first-hand contact with Maori and other shamanistic cultures. Vividly illustrated by first and second hand accounts, this book will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, those with a psychological interest in spiritual cultures as well as those in the fields of developmental psychology, cultural anthropology, neuroscience, aesthetics and linguistics.

Dear Reader; My daily life seemed in a good place. My daughter, 24, was pursuing a career in medicine, and my son, 19, was pursuing his career in ministry. I had a successful career as a teacher for the School District of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, while my husband had a 30-year tenure as a forklift operator. While we both worked our full-time jobs, we started a limousine company. My husband always puts family first. He ensured that our home ran smoothly and properly including maintaining our finances and obligations. I felt humbly blessed to have such an attentive husband. Then all of the sudden everything changed. I was living with a total stranger. I no longer knew the man who I woke up next to every morning. My husband, at the tender age of fifty-seven, was diagnosed with The End of Middle-Stage Alzheimer’s Disease. This was the beginning of many years of tears and heartache as a caregiver of someone with this disease. Through my personal experience, I was thrown into a world of Alzheimer’s, science, research, the life changes. This is my personal story. “Alzheimer’s: The Disease That Destroys The Mind.”

With the onset of chronic illness, an individual and family's world, previously taken for granted, is often undone. The actual and potential losses from illness impact on family, friends, physicians, therapists, nurses, and others in profound and unexpected ways. Through his own honest, personal account and the testimony of others, Robert Shuman takes us inside the illness experience to help us better grasp the daily inner lives of the ailing person and his or her family. As our aging population lives longer, chronic illness touches more and more of us. Whether as patient or parent, nurse or spouse, colleague or therapist, we need to have greater knowledge and understanding of the intricacies of chronic illness.Robert Shuman maps out the many dimensions of illness and invites the reader to explore its challenging terrain in a way that provides opportunities for self-discovery and reflection. In lyrical prose, he opens up new ways of thinking about the psychology of illness and healing. He suggests, for example, that illness symptoms can have a generative effect on a person's imaginative and creative possibilities, and that the socially despised events of illness and disability offer new ways of being once sought through the work of religion. Drawing on the fields of behavioral and family medicine, medical anthropology and sociology, moral and bioethical philosophies, and family, existential, cognitive, Jungian, and archetypal psychotherapies, among others, The Psychology of Chronic Illness raises provocative questions for the professional caregiver as well as for those living with illness and disability.This book will help anyone touched by illness, personally or professionally, to support those living with chronic illnesses and disabilities; to cope with multiple impacts on work, relationships, social roles, individual dreams, and disappointments; to listen to and voice suffering and fears, grief and anger, questions of values and moral doubts; and to acknowledge loss and mourning as a “common ground” that we all share. This book offerrs specific resources to the caregiver and aids the professional in his or her ethical obligation to give. Moreover, Shuman's voice is one of compassion, reminding us how to hold on to or recover hope, meaning, and morale during times of affliction and distress.