Product Description: What is illness? Is it a physiological dysfunction, a social label, or a way of experiencing the world? How do the physical, social and emotional worlds of a person change when they become ill? And can there be well-being within illness? In this remarkable and thought-provoking book, Havi Carel explores these questions by weaving together the personal story of her own serious illness with insights and reflections drawn from her work as a philosopher...read more

Product Description: As the world's most comprehensive and deeply researched system of alternative and complementary medicine, Chinese medicine enjoys a large following in scientifically developed communities. Yet its concepts and principles have been shrouded in mystery and obscure language...read more

In recent decades, both medical humanities and medical history have emerged as rich and varied sub-disciplines. Medicine, Health and the Arts is a collection of specially commissioned essays designed to bring together different approaches to these complex fields. Written by a selection of established and emerging scholars, this volume embraces a breadth and range of methodological approaches to highlight not only developments in well-established areas of debate, but also newly emerging areas of investigation, new methodological approaches to the medical humanities and the value of the humanities in medical education. Divided into five sections, this text begins by offering an overview and analysis of the British and North American context. It then addresses in-depth the historical and contemporary relationship between visual art, literature and writing, performance and music. There are three chapters on each art form, which consider how history can illuminate current challenges and potential future directions. Each section contains an introductory overview, addressing broad themes and methodological concerns; a case study of the impact of medicine, health and well-being on an art form; and a case study of the impact of that art form on medicine, health and wellbeing. The underlining theme of the book is that the relationship between medicine, health and the arts can only be understood by examining the reciprocal relationship and processes of exchange between them. This volume promises to be a welcome and refreshing addition to the developing field of medical humanities. Both informative and thought provoking, it will be important reading for students, academics and practitioners in the medical humanities and arts in health, as well as health professionals, and all scholars and practitioners interested in the questions and debates surrounding medicine, health and the arts.

Product Description: Over the past forty years, the health humanities, previously called the medical humanities, has emerged as one of the most exciting fields for interdisciplinary scholarship, advancing humanistic inquiry into bioethics, human rights, health care, and the uses of technology...read more

Product Description: This path-breaking book reinterprets Chinese medicine using the approach of the philosophy of science in a manner that strikes common ground with biomedical science. It strips Chinese medical theory of the mystique and metaphysical pretentions that too often plague the discipline, presenting this theory as being derived from empirical observations and clinical findings...read more

Product Description: To become a counselor or psychotherapist, one must learn a confusing and conceptually disconnected array of theories, techniques, and ideologies. For instance, CBT, humanistic, and psychodynamic interventions have virtually opposite conceptual foundations, but they are all used to help clients...read more

Product Description: Why does Western medicine fail to cure chronic physical and mental illness? Why do so many treatments and drugs work only for a limited time before eventually losing effectiveness or producing harmful side effects? Dr. Steven Goldsmith's answer is at once counterintuitive and commonsensical: the root of the problem is our combative approach...read more

Product Description: An exploration of the philosophical foundation of modern medicine which explains why such a medicine possesses the characteristics it does and where precisely its strengths as well as its weaknesses lie. Written in plain English, it should be accessible to anyone who is intellectually curious, lay persons and medical professionals alike...read more

Product Description: Radical changes in general practice have, suggests the author, resulted in a crisis of professional morale. In this work James Willis attempts to rekindle the spirit that some have lost and explores the problem of retaining respect for human values in an increasingly systematized world...read more