Patients' ‘thingification’, unexplained symptoms and response‐ability in the clinical context: in response to ‘Patients' substantialization of disease, the hybrid symptom and the metaphysical care’, by Alexandra Parvan

• DOI: 10.1111/jep.12430
• Publication Date: 2015-08-17T03:19:13Z
• Authors: Thor Eirik Eriksen; Anna Luise Kirkengen
• Keywords: Mind-Body Relations, Metaphysical; Parents; Physician-Patient Relations; 03 medical and health sciences; Medicalization; Humans; Somatoform Disorders; 0305 other medical science; 3. Good health

AbstractThe types of diseases, or categories of suffering, referred to as medically unexplained symptoms or syndromes (MUS) are the focus for the following commentary. Such cases seem to invite reflection. The very nature of such complex patterns of disease and suffering raises a number of fundamental epistemological and ontological issues. Furthermore, such health challenges can serve as the basis for an exploration of how the suffering person as well as the medical caretaker comes to grip with disease, incapacitation or suffering. We have structured our comments into two parts: first, we will describe medically unexplained health problems as the background for an inquiry into a process wherein patients reify their suffering in order to meet their doctors on equal terms, which carries a potential for alienation. Second, we will reflect on Alexandra Parvan's text as regards patients' ‘substantialization’ of their disease, the resulting ‘hybrid symptom’ and a proposed model for care and healing.