Viagra And The Mind Body Problem

This book critically assesses the implications of modern medicine's claim to be a natural science. Medicine models its scientific and clinical self-understanding on an obsolete positivist conception of science, reality, and consciousness. In this view, the body is modeled as a biological machine, disease as breakdown of the machine, and therapy as physical measures to fix the machine. The problems besetting medical science and practice are rooted in the inadequacy of the positivist philosophical assumptions regarding the nature of science, reality and consciousness To base the diagnostic practices and therapeutic regimes purely on knowledge of physical processes in the human body is, in view of this analysis, at best grossly inadequate, at worst thoroughly dehumanizing (Anton van Niekerk: Editorial Foreword). This means that medicine's clinical method cannot be transformed without transforming the underlying view of science, of reality, and of the human person. The book proposes a broader model of science which overcomes the outdated dichotomy between human and natural sciences. Science is viewed as an interdisciplinary exercise generating multiple perspectives. The insights of the human sciences are essential for scientific clinical medicine. Utilizing evolutionary biology and complexity theory, the author proposes an alternative understanding of reality and human consciousness as a basis for a transformed clinical method. Reality is a hierarchy of systems of increasing complexity. Different levels can be distinguished, namely material systems, living material systems, conscious living material systems and self-conscious living material systems. Each level represents a new manner of being which requires a different scientific discourse of understanding. Using this model of reality the author argues against understanding human consciousness as a byproduct of physical processes in the brain. The human person is a self-conscious, complex, psycho-somatic system, whose well-being is conditioned by much more than physical processes.

Provides details on the history of Viagra and the social phenomenon that surrounds it.

Since the FDA approved Viagra in March 1998, the «little blue pill» has been prescribed to over twenty million men. The Viagra Ad Venture: Masculinity, Media, and the Performance of Sexual Health chronicles the story of Viagra as reported in our nation's news outlets and promoted by Pfizer Pharmaceutical's marketing materials. In this critical discourse analysis, author Jay Baglia uses feminist and performance theory to uncover the meaning of Viagra and its relationship to performances of masculinity. At stake are the ways in which we construct normalcy, particularly as it relates to health, sexuality, gender, and the body. This book fits well in a variety of classes including gender studies, media studies, research methods, feminist theory, human sexuality, and health communication.

Take a new look at women’s sexuality! This fascinating book looks at the wide-ranging therapeutic, social, and political implications of the new paradigm of women’s sexuality. International in scope and multidisciplinary in approach, A New View of Women’s Sexual Problems examines the theoretical and practical effects of the landmark document produced by the Working Group on a New View of Women’s Sexuality. The book brings together gender theory, psychology, social science, and medicine in a powerful cultural critique of the reigning medical approach to women’s sexual health. International experts from India, Costa Rica, Israel, the US, and many other cultures place this revolutionary idea in cultural and political context, as well as extrapolating fresh new treatment options for dealing with women’s sexual problems. A New View of Women’s Sexual Problems analyzes the new paradigm’s implications in many fields, including: family medicine couples counseling for straight and lesbian partners STD prevention and sexual health issues sex therapy sex education feminist theory developmental psychology

A groundbreaking collection of essays highlighting the links between contemporary society's over-reliance on both media and drugs.

Men of the Global South: A Reader is the most diverse and accessible volume yet published on men and masculinities throughout the developing world. A Reader that also offers a wide range of original contributions, it explores male experience in a uniquely vivid and accessible way. Adam Jones provides a framing introduction that surveys the growing literature on Southern men and masculinities, and links it to the broader study of gender and development. Six main sections portray different aspects of male experience in the global South: 'Family and Sexuality', ;Ritual & Belief', 'Work', 'Governance and Conflict', 'Migrations' and 'Masculinities in Motion'. The text, richly complemented by a number of photographs, serves as an ideal introduction to the lives of men and boys from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America/the Caribbean. This book will appeal to students and scholars of gender and development, as well as to general readers interested in gaining a greater understanding and appreciation of men’s roles, challenges, and contributions worldwide.

'Men of the Global South' focuses on the lives and roles of Third World men. This edited work uses original and wide-ranging research which significantly enlarges the field of gender and development. It is an excellent textbook for undergraduates and postgraduates in development studies.