Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Wonder and the patient

Evans, H.M.

Wonder and the patient Thumbnail


Authors

H.M. Evans



Abstract

Is it possible to distinguish, as sociologist Arthur Frank proposes, an ‘ideal of wonder’ within which ill persons could recover some of their former sense of life and flourishing, even within the constraints of ill-health? Beyond this, are there more general benefits in terms of health and well-being that could accrue from cultivating an openness to wonder? In this paper I will first outline and defend a notion of wonder that gives philosophical support to Frank’s proposal, noting why thinking about medical treatment may readily provoke a sense of wonder. Second I will however limit the normative force of such an ‘ideal of wonder’ noting its demands and some of the challenges facing it. The paper goes on, third, to conjecture wider benefits within and beyond the clinical encounter arising from being mindful of the wonder of embodied human agency. Fourth the paper will consider alignments between the foregoing analysis and some theoretical commitments in recent work in health geography. Finally I will briefly reconsider the notion of the body-as-territory, and the role of the imagination in bringing it under wonder’s gaze.

Citation

Evans, H. (2015). Wonder and the patient. Journal of Medical Humanities, 36(1), 47-58. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-014-9320-6

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Apr 24, 2015
Online Publication Date Dec 9, 2014
Publication Date Mar 1, 2015
Deposit Date Apr 24, 2015
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Journal of Medical Humanities
Print ISSN 1041-3545
Electronic ISSN 1573-3645
Publisher Springer
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 36
Issue 1
Pages 47-58
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-014-9320-6
Keywords Wonder, Patient, Well-being, Embodied agency, Medical humanities, Health geography, Imagination.

Files

Published Journal Article (189 Kb)
PDF

Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2014. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.





You might also like



Downloadable Citations