In this post, physical therapist Keith Waldron Jeffrey Bishop's article Rejecting Medical Humanism. In this article, published in 2007, Dr. Bishop writes eloquently of the metaphysics of medicine, referencing the works of Nietzsche, Foucault, Heidegger, and Deleuze, and how they relate to today’s biopsychosociologisms. He puts forth a compelling argument against the use of the humanities and narrative medicine as an add-on, or a compensation for the mechanisation of medicine. He writes of a continued dualism that no longer distinguishes the body from the mind, but instead focuses on the dichotomy between meanings and mechanisms. Dr. Bishop reflects on the ever-increasing emphasis … [Read more...] about Keith Waldron – Rejecting Medical Humanism – 30DoS #29
Mobilizing Desire: A Deleuzian re-formation of movement
Each day over the next week I'll post up an abstract for a paper being presented by a member of the Critical Physiotherapy Network at the In Sickness and In Health conference in Mallorca in June 2015. (You can find more information on the conference here.) Mobilizing Desire: A Deleuzian re-formation of movement By Barbara Gibson & David Nicholls In the field of rehabilitation medicine, enabling mobility is a primary focus of intervention. Mobilities establish one's place in the world both in terms of material location and through the meanings assigned to different bodily movements and configurations. For example, wheelchairs and walkers allow access to the world but also mark the … [Read more...] about Mobilizing Desire: A Deleuzian re-formation of movement
Metaphors of rhizomatic thinking
Earlier this week Mike Stewart (@knowpainmike) ran a @physiotalk Tweet Chat on the hidden influence of metaphor in physiotherapy (see here, and Mike's excellent review of the Tweet Chat here). It inspired me to think about the role metaphors play in learning. If you follow this blog regularly, you will have heard the name Gilles Deleuze. If you haven't heard this name though, it might pay to do a bit of web trawling, because some of his ideas are pretty astonishing. There have been some startling thinkers emerge from Europe over the last 100 years - Heidegger, Foucault, Sartre, Derrida, Adorno, etc. - but, for pure inventiveness, Deleuze takes the biscuit. (One tip though...I would not … [Read more...] about Metaphors of rhizomatic thinking
Critical physiotherapy curios – updates, ideas and new postings
Research We have to start with this. WCPT has published a list of the 15 most influential trials in physical therapy. I loved the fact that they used a qualitative process to ascertain which blinded, controlled and randomised clinical trial they found most influential. No hint of irony there then! Fatemeh Rabiee, Anne Robbins and Maryam Khan's article in Health Education Journal Gym for Free: The short-term impact of an innovative public health policy on the health and wellbeing of residents in a deprived constituency in Birmingham, UK is well worth a look if you're interested in how community-based health interventions might work for people in marginalised communities. A paper … [Read more...] about Critical physiotherapy curios – updates, ideas and new postings
Connectivity #4 – The philosophy of connectivity
This post is part of a new project for the Critical Physiotherapy Network. If you want to know more about the project, track back to this post.Connectivity is about connections. Surprising, I know, but there it is. What makes it interesting and novel as a theory is the philosophy that underpins it. Firstly it is ontological. It is about being, so naturally there is a semblance of phenomenology in the complex assemblage of ideas that underpins it. But this is not the phenomenology of Heidegger, more the later phenomenology that emphasises the importance of intersubjectivity. (For more on this idea, there is a post coming up in a few days with an interview with Jens Olesen who's … [Read more...] about Connectivity #4 – The philosophy of connectivity