Reading the Psychosomatic in Medical and Popular Culture
Something. Nothing. Everything
- 160 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Reading the Psychosomatic in Medical and Popular Culture
Something. Nothing. Everything
About this book
Pain. Chronic digestive symptoms. Poor sleep. Neuropathy. Sensory disturbances. Fatigue. Panic. Constant illness and discomfort. Frequent difficulty coping with work, school, relationships.
Despite the common experience of being told that it's all in their heads, that they're just making themselves sick, individuals with these symptoms are experiencing a very real, sometimes debilitating, illness phenomenon. But what is it? Physical or mental illness? Political or social identity? Cultural, narrative, or discursive construction? When something goes awry at the intersection of mind and body – the psychosomatic – what is happening?
Widely recognized, yet difficult to classify, diagnose, treat, and explain, psychosomatic disorders are heavily stigmatized, and the associated syndromes have become the site of controversy and antipathy in the provider–patient relationship. In popular culture, terms such as medically unexplained symptoms, hysteria, neurasthenia, hypochondria, functional illness, and malingering are misunderstood, unknown, or rejected outright. Meanwhile, perspectives from cultural and textual studies focus on the psychosomatic as a metaphor in art, literature, and popular media, where disruptions of the body and mind are regularly made to stand in for individual alienation and cultural malaise. Bringing together multiple perspectives, this challenging volume tackles causes, and innovative, humanistic solutions, to conflicts in the provider–patient relationship; uses the psychosomatic as a lens for theorizing the self in culture; and examines the metaphorical potential of the psychosomatic in fictional narrative.
Providing a unique assemblage of interdisciplinary, international approaches to understanding the problem of the psychosomatic in both expert and lay discourses, this pioneering edited collection is aimed at students and researchers of health, popular culture, and the health care humanities.
Frequently asked questions
- Essential is ideal for learners and professionals who enjoy exploring a wide range of subjects. Access the Essential Library with 800,000+ trusted titles and best-sellers across business, personal growth, and the humanities. Includes unlimited reading time and Standard Read Aloud voice.
- Complete: Perfect for advanced learners and researchers needing full, unrestricted access. Unlock 1.4M+ books across hundreds of subjects, including academic and specialized titles. The Complete Plan also includes advanced features like Premium Read Aloud and Research Assistant.
Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- Contents
- Notes on editor
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: the psychosomatic as nothing, something, and everything
- 1 Patients with multiple somatic symptoms and their physicians: at the mercy of a medical system
- 2 Narrative medicine and fibromyalgia: between facts and fictions, "factions" to be honored
- 3 Medically unexplained symptoms and the ethics of diagnosis: what does it mean when the doctor says there's nothing wrong?
- 4 Feeding your feelings: emotional eating in mid-twentieth-century America
- 5 Impossible illnesses: decolonizing psychosomatic medicine
- 6 Narrative coherence and medical explanations of psychosomatic pain
- 7 Medicalstudentitis as a rite of passage in popular literature
- 8 Women with long-term exhaustion in fictional literature: a comparative approach
- 9 The brute within: psychosomatic illness and narrative in The Sopranos
- 10 Poor Things: parodying diagnosis in popular culture
- Index