Somatisation - body IV.

This post continues the body topic. The following about somatisation was written by Robert Shaw which is perfectly embedding into my topic and meets my voice. Shaw is a Psychioterapiest and registered Osteopath in private practice (for note; see belowe).

The construct of somatisation, within the medical world, refers to bodily pain which does not appear to have an organic physical aetiology. Such pain represents a challenge to medicine, as it defies classification within a discrete pathological category. Nevertheless, the very naming of a specific category, in this case somatisation, does provide a medical label. However, people to whom thi label is attributed are often additionally classified by the medical profession as “crocks, turkeys, hypochondriacs, the worried well, and the problem patients” (Lipowski, 1988) There is a belief that pain is ‘all in the mind’ (Evans 1993). There appears to be an assumption that somatisation and psychosomatic disorders are linked, and of less importance than ‘real’ illness, where the patient has a demonstrable pathological label.

Somatisation is a ubiquitous phenomenon in primary health care settings throughout Western culture. Medicine is beginning to view the phenomenon with increasing interest, as the cost of treatment for people who are somatising is called into question. Other cultures have observed somatisation; for example shamanism acknowledges the existence of psychosomatic process (Achterberg 1985). In ancient Buddhism, it was believed that the conversation psychological pain into somatic pain was an adaptive achievement. In other cultures, there is an attempt to link affect to bodily organs, and thereby transcend the mind-body dichotomy; an example here is how Afghanis refer to ‘squeezing of the hart’ to denote sadness or depression. In Chinese medicine, somatic changes and emotions are linked by notions of the angry liver and the melancholy spleen (Ots 1990).

Somatisation, is a distinct category, does try to solve the problem of linking mind and body, bot does so only within the confines of reductionistic medical discourse. This problem has been noted by Ots, who rejects the notion of somatisation on the grounds that it is embedded in the mind-body dichotomy. In arguing against the use of the term somatisation, he makes the link with the body another way, and suggests that the German word ‘lieb’ could be employed. This would describe how mind, body, and person are considered to be all part of lived experience.

Note:
The Embodied Psychotherapist The Therapist's Body Story
Author: Robert Shaw
ISBN: 978-1-58391-269-0 (paperback) 978-1-58391-268-3 (hardback) 978-0-203-42081-2 (electronic)
No. of pages: 170
Originally Published On: September 2003

Thinking strange

Dear Readers,

since I hardly get any feedback (comments) of my writings, a question is raising in my mind. Is anybody interested in things I have been posting? Is anybody interested in sorts of academics associated with CE? Without the Locomap I should feel nobody is, but thanks that map I realise some people visit the blog. I feel however strange to write academics further...

Body - Drew Leder

Drew Leder (1990) has contributed to the paradigm of lived-body, through his analysis of how we come to know our bodies by their absence. Until we have our attention drawn to our body, it remains, to all intents and purposes, absent from consciousness. An assumption is made that the body will exist from one lived moment to the next. However, this disappearing act poses a problem which Leder (1990: 69) states: “Why, if human experience rooted in the bodily, is the body so often absent from experience?” He attempts to resolve this by taking the disappearance of the body into the background of consciousness as a significant phenomenon. This, Ledder suggests, is related to bodily functioning. Body absence then becomes essential to normal body function, the body’s ability to conceal itself “will help account for our cultural understanding of embodiment” (Leder 1990:69). Thus, Ledder draws our attention to the visceral body; he highlights the notion that bodily perception ins not always conscious. Strauss (1966) has argued that, phenomenologically, movement and sensation are intrinsically linked. This is contrary to Cartesian thought, which viewed sensation and movement as fundamentally separate.

Here we see that sensation and movement are inextricably linked. It is clear that these perspectives dissolve the argument for mind-body dichotomy.


Notes:

Drew Leder (1990) The Absent Body The University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Strauss EW (1966) Phenomenological Psychology Tavistock, London

Body II

It seems, there is much interest within sociology on the subject of body. Sharma(1996) goes on to suggest that there is a body culture dualism often underlying the sociological and anthropological approaches to the problem of body investigation. This leads to a difficult tangle of dualisms; mind-body, mind-culture and body-culture. An important consequence of addressing the body would, rest on an attempt at corporeal understanding before we are reduced to a state of desiccated consciousness. Would it be holism? Why not? Anyway, I believe this could be the way how Andras Peto was thinking. The problem of the body is highlighted in sociology by Frank when he observed “It [the body] is not an entity but the process of the own being” (Featherstone et al 1991:96).
The notion of the ‘lived body’ arose from the work of Erwin Straus and Maurice Merleau-Ponty and drives us to the field of phenomenology. In ‘The Phenomenology of Perception’ Merleau-Ponty (1962) provides insights into how the body is our means of belonging to our world. We are able to perceive and sense from birth, and the apparatus we have determines the nature of the perception. Both Straus and Merleau-Ponty were influenced by the work of gestalt psychology, which suggested (about gestalt see my blog on 22nd of September 2008) we perceive in groups, in wholes, rather than discrete entities (Clarcson 1989; Rock and Palmer 1990).
In the paradigm of the lived body, they suggest that “ it is the body which first ‘understands’ the world, grasping its surroundings and moving to fulfil its goals… the body is not just a caused mechanism, but an ‘intentional entity’ always direct toward an object pole, a world” (Leder 1984:31). Robert Shaw (1997) points out that the idea of lived body allows for an interaction with our environment, and lends a perspective of dynamism to the body. The body does not merely have things done to it, but takes an active part in engaging with the world; it is a lived-body. An understanding of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception takes us away from the Cartesian dualism and suggests that the body is “ the very basis of human subjectivity” (Crossley 1995) If we examine the body from this view we might see bridging the gap between individual and collective subjectivity, since we all have bodies, and come to know of them in both a self-reflexive manner, as lived-body experience, and also in relation to other bodies and their reaction to us.
It will be continued…

Please do not worry, at the end of this topic I wish to give a full reference of authors and their works. Thanks for your patience.

Hey, Body...

How do you look at the body if you are a conductor?

Well, to clear this is not too easy. We did not get as a conductor any scientificly particular way to look at it during in our training. However, the body presents peculiar problems for academic disciplines which attempt to study it. Initially, there appears to be a problem of where the body should be located for investigation. It could be situated within the neutral science, including medicine, psychology and the social sciences – all can lay claim to body knowledge. The natural sciences would appropriate the body on the grounds that only a rigorous examination of bodily parts will yield the body’s secrets. “Such reductionism, when applied to the body, may well have value within hard-core medical practice, but certainly misses the area of human experience related to subjectivity, with which the body becomes inextricably involved.” (Shaw, 1997)
/The body/ “ is far too important a subject for sociologists to leave to the natural sciences” (Schilling 1993)

Why shouldn’t we look at the body issue in distinguish areas? In sociology, phenomenology, somatisation, in psychotherapy!
On the subject of the body within Sociology I would suggest to look up the following authors: Shilling, Synott, Yoshida, Bendelow, Williams, Sharma.
Shilling (1993) points out how we are becoming body conscious. This he suggests, in an aspect of high modernity, in that the body becomes more relevant to understanding our self- identity. It is certainly an aspect of modern culture where the body is viewed as a “legitimate consumer target by the marketing industry”. Such notions as body image perpetuate the mind-body dichotomy.

It will be continued…

Konduktor Verband, Deutschland

Conference in Munich

I read the reports of Susie M. and additional thoughts by Andrew S. about the conference what was held at the last weekend in Munich. My first three posts in my blog were about the same topic, about the 10 year anniversary of Association of Conductors, Germany. They were written in Hungarian, so probably many people missed the contents of them in the English speaking world. As I was one of the founders and one of the first activists of that association in Germany I felt to give a little personal and historical review in those posts.
Presumably one day I will make my effort to write it in English as well. By the way, I just wanted to say: Happy Birthday to the Association.

Note:
See my blog on 23th and 28th of July 2008