Illness: A phenomenological perspective

Abstract

Phenomenologically viewed, biomedical paradigm of disease (which focuses on the dysfunction of the biological organism) does not provide an adequate account of illness. Hence, illness must be understood not merely in terms of clinically definable disease states but in terms of illness-as-lived or illness as experienced. The living body is an integration of corporeality and subjectivity and hence illness has both a physical and an existential significance. In order to treat the patient, the physician should not only focus on the patient's sensory experience of illness but pay attention to the patient's apprehension of illness at the reflective level namely his evaluations, expectations etc. Phenomenologists focus on the patient as an embodied person in a life-world, in Husserlian terms, or as being-in –the- world, in Heideggerian terms. The pertinent question is whether the phenomenological model or the bio-medical model which is prevalent in modern western medicine better addresses the patient's problems and provides the care that he deserves. In the western scientific medicine it is the biomedical model of illness which is most prevalent. The biomedical practitioners assume that only 'objective' facts constitute the reality of illness. In the biomedical model, the human body is viewed as a material, mechanised object consisting of a number of physical parts which can be fixed or replaced with new ones when broken or lost. Vis-a-vis the phenomenological model, illness is not so much the dysfunction of the mechanised body or body part but rather a disruption of an embodied person's life world. The patient exists as an integrated body, not simply as a collection of separate body parts. Thus the phenomenological model of illness enables the physician to provide the quality of care the patients deserve and expect from modern western medicine.