Wardrope, A. and Reuber, M. orcid.org/0000-0002-4104-6705 (2022) The hermeneutics of symptoms. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 25 (3). pp. 395-412. ISSN 1386-7423
Abstract
The clinical encounter begins with presentation of an illness experience; but throughout that encounter, something else is constructed from it – a symptom. The symptom is a particular interpretation of that experience, useful for certain purposes in particular contexts. The hermeneutics of medicine – the study of the interpretation of human experience in medical terms – has largely taken the process of symptom-construction to be transparent, focussing instead on how constellations of symptoms are interpreted as representative of particular conditions. This paper examines the hermeneutical activity of symptom-construction more closely. I propose a fourfold account of the clinical function of symptoms: as theoretical entities; as tools for communication; as guides to palliative intervention; and as candidates for medical explanation or intervention. I also highlight roles they might play in illness experience. I use this framework to discuss four potential failures of symptom-interpretation: failure of symptom-type and symptom-token recognition; loss of the complete picture of illness experience through overwhelming emphasis on its symptomatic interpretation; and intersubjective feedback effects of symptom description altering the ill person’s own perceptions of their phenomenal experience. I conclude with some suggestions of potential remedies for failures in the process of symptom-construction.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © Crown 2022. Open Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | Phenomenology; Symptoms; Hermeneutics; Narrative medicine; Subjectivity |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Sheffield Teaching Hospitals |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 17 Jun 2022 09:51 |
Last Modified: | 24 Feb 2023 09:59 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s11019-022-10086-z |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:188100 |
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Filename: Wardrope-Reuber2022_Article_TheHermeneuticsOfSymptoms.pdf
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