Phenomenology lets medicine treat symptoms as lived rather than merely physical
Evidence
Phenomenology is useful for talking about religious or mystical experiences: we can describe them as they feel from the inside without having to prove that they represent the world accurately. For similar reasons, phenomenology helps physicians. It makes it possible to consider medical symptoms as they are experienced by the patient rather than exclusively as physical processes. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 145
Categorization
- XREF: Pairs naturally with Oliver Sacks’ patient-case approach and with the broader idea that clinical medicine gains from first-person description. — connects to: Phenomenology investigates direct experience of phenomena rather than questions of reality — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 11; Phenomenology restores the unnoticed richness of everyday experience — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 147; Phenomenology has been applied across music, medicine, and many other fields. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 1182 (+1 more)
- SEED: A possible essay angle: phenomenology as a quiet forerunner of patient-centered medicine and narrative medicine.
Broader Connections
- Phenomenology has been applied across music, medicine, and many other fields.
#expands(0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 1182 - Illness makes the lived body appear as an object, a given substance.
#complicates(0.80)