Agency, embodiment and enactment in psychosomatic theory and practice.
Medical humanities June 1, 2019 Laurence J Kirmayer, Ana Gómez-carrillo 104 citations
Psychosomatic explanation in medicine, psychiatry, and psychology creates a social grey zone where conflicts about agency, causality, and moral responsibility arise, reflecting deep-seated dualism in Western concepts of personhood. Illnesses viewed as psychologically mediated tend to be seen as less real or legitimate. New forms of dualism appear in philosophical attacks on Engel's biopsychosocial approach and in the NIMH's Research Domain Criteria program, which favors exclusively biological explanations. The case of resignation syndrome among refugee children in Sweden illustrates how accounting for medically unexplained symptoms raises problems of ascribing agency.