In my immediate close circles, 2013 has been a year highlighted by loss, illness and injury; I my... more In my immediate close circles, 2013 has been a year highlighted by loss, illness and injury; I myself was involved in a motorbike accident which has impacted on my life, the life of those around me and of course how I feel about myself. I have a medical file that lists all interventions carried out on me and I have nothing but praise for the medical team that attended to me. But when I read the medical file, full of phrases such as Tibia, tissue, crushing, skin graft, I struggle to relate these phrases to the lived experience of the hospital and my injury. Let me explain; before the injury I was blissfully unaware of my body, my body was what my body did. That is to say I was aware of its essence, but not its existence. The same as the essence of a hammer is to hammer, the essence of my body was to experience the world and it did it very well, often without me even being aware of its existence. Jean Paul Sartre referred to his as the subjective body of which we are unaware and used and an analogy to describe the sensation. Imagine walking in the mountains alone surrounded by nothing but nature, we live this experience unaware of our body and how we are in space and time. Now imagine suddenly in the distance you seeing a speck of what seems like another person coming towards you, your perception shifts and you become aware of the existence of yourself and your body, our body changes from unconsciously subjective to consciously objective as we become aware of an objective, embodied version of US. This is the objective self that others see and interact with. As the car ploughed into me, my consciousness of my body changed from blissfully unconscious to painfully conscious and from that moment on my body became an object, a disempowered objective body in the hands of " the experts ". From this moment on my body became something to test, probe, examine and judge; It was found wanting and the shame made me want to disassociate myself from THIS BODY which is not mine. This body exists and has crutches incorporated into it and when a nurse casually moves them, it feels like a violation of my body. Through intentionality I become only too aware of its shortfalls; reaching, getting up, shitting, pissing and masturbating are all intentions frustrated by an object body. My awareness of its " in space feeling " becomes heightened, where I am in the room, what is to my left, to my right, in front or behind all become of extreme importance. Although the doctors explained what they were doing at all times, I don't experience my body as tissue, nerves and tendons. Luckily I know my foot, as we've been introduced and this goes some way to helping make sense of my injury. But I wonder what sense would I make of a lung cancer, where I don't know my lung or multiple sclerosis where being told that axioms in the central nervous system do not have adequate myelin insulation. How could I make sense of that? In my opinion western medicine falls short of helping us make sense of a perceptual shift towards our own body and how we make sense of our illness. Medicine in general takes an anatomicopathalogical view and takes illness and disease from the domain of individual subjective lived experience and places it firmly in the physical world. This focus encourages acute care, rescue and repair, waging wars on disease and prolonging biological life at all costs.
Bodies My wife's recent stay in hospital got me thinking about our bodies, power relations and ho... more Bodies My wife's recent stay in hospital got me thinking about our bodies, power relations and how psychology in general has failed to consider our bodies as something more than either, a bunch of interconnected neurons in the Central nervous System, or simply as a vehicle to move our mind about from one place to another. Neither of these two descriptions gives a very accurate description of how it feels to me to have a body. The body has generally been the realms of the biological medical world where the body is an object to be studied, measured, compared, poked, prodded and analysed. Any relation between this object body and stuff going on in my mind has been purely coincidental. The problem started with René Descartes, a seventeenth century philosopher, who saw subjective human experience as being qualitatively different from the objective world of the physical universe, in which he included our bodies. This is what became known as the Cartesian Dualism. That is a separation of the mind and body, and has been debated backwards and forwards ever since. Bodies are great things, mine works pretty damn well considering all the stick that it's received over the years, in fact if it was a sensibly priced European car it would have probably given up the ghost a long time ago. But my body is changing, I don't mean in a sort of getting older type way, which obviously it is, but I'm becoming much more aware of it lately. Its limits, its shape, how it reacts to certain situations, all seem strange lately. When I was seventeen for example, I don't remember having a body. I took it so much for granted it always comfortably responded when I wanted it too and it didn't really give any problems. This type of body is what is known to the existential philosophers such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty as the subject body. That is the subjective feeling of having a body that interacts with the world. " The body is the vehicle of being in the world " says Merleau-Ponty, " Our body connects us to the world.. offers us a way to understand the world ". I hate the word " holistic " and its connotations with new age crackpots, pop psychology self help books and aromatherapy. But if we are to take Merleau-Ponty seriously we cant get much more holistic than that. Our body, our mind and the world interconnected. This is I fear where modern medicine fails to deliver, it is still bent of separating our mind and body, the individual from the social and maintaining our body as an object. Our body is linked to our feelings about our self, we are our bodies and illness is not just a body thing, it also affects everything about us. When things are going well and we take for granted our subject body we don't notice it. But it only takes illness and our body suddenly becomes an object, uncomfortable, painful and awkward. I recently read a great piece of research carried out by Linda Finlay (2003) where she interviewed a young mother who had been diagnosed Multiple Sclerosis. The patient described how she lost the feeling in her fingertips and had a sensation of numbness. Now not such a big deal you might say, and medically you'd be right. But if we take into account the terrible sensations she had as she tried to cuddle her children and the fact that if she rubbed her hand down her childs cheek, she could not feel it. This affected her at all levels as she wrestled with the idea that she wouldn't be able to feel her children again. This goes much further than illness being something related to our bodies, we can see that illness affects the way people feel about themselves and how they understand both themselves and the world around them. Present day medicine is still determined to
Perceived Infectability and Germ Aversion are two behavioural strategies that enable the individu... more Perceived Infectability and Germ Aversion are two behavioural strategies that enable the individual to assess personal risk and make behavioural changes to protect itself against contacts with possible infectious pathogens. The Perceived Vulnerability to Disease (PVD) self-report questionnaire is widely used to measure subjective perceived vulnerability to disease, but it has never been used during an ongoing pandemic. This study looks at individual differences in perceived vulnerability during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and specifically looks for differences between cultures, gender and age groups. Measurements of PVD were based on the mean scores of two factors, Perceived Infectability and Germ Aversion. Significant differences were found between Spanish-speaking and English-speaking groups, with the Spanish group showing higher levels of Germ Aversion and English-speaking group showing more perceived infectability. There was a significant difference between genders regarding Perceived Infectability, with men perceiving themselves more vulnerable than women. There were no significant gender differences for Germ Aversion. There were no significant differences between age groups, but there was a significant interaction between age*gender for Germ Aversion showing that the older the age group of men, the higher they scored on Germ Aversion, whilst the reverse was for women. The older the women’s age group the lower the score on Germ Aversion This is surprising as figures from the World Health Organisation show that both men and the elderly are especially vulnerable to dying from COVID-19. Recommendations include specific programmes aimed at raising awareness in both vulnerable groups.
Chris lives and works in Madrid, Spain where he runs a small psychotherapy practice for the Engli... more Chris lives and works in Madrid, Spain where he runs a small psychotherapy practice for the English speaking expat community in Madrid www.counsellingtherapistmadrid.com Our...journey requires us to be touched and shaken by what we find on the way and not to be afraid to discover our own limitations..., Uncertainties and doubts. It is only with such an attitude of openness and wonder that we can encounter the impenetrable everyday mysteries [of our world] (van Deurzen-
In my immediate close circles, 2013 has been a year highlighted by loss, illness and injury; I my... more In my immediate close circles, 2013 has been a year highlighted by loss, illness and injury; I myself was involved in a motorbike accident which has impacted on my life, the life of those around me and of course how I feel about myself. I have a medical file that lists all interventions carried out on me and I have nothing but praise for the medical team that attended to me. But when I read the medical file, full of phrases such as Tibia, tissue, crushing, skin graft, I struggle to relate these phrases to the lived experience of the hospital and my injury. Let me explain; before the injury I was blissfully unaware of my body, my body was what my body did. That is to say I was aware of its essence, but not its existence. The same as the essence of a hammer is to hammer, the essence of my body was to experience the world and it did it very well, often without me even being aware of its existence. Jean Paul Sartre referred to his as the subjective body of which we are unaware and used and an analogy to describe the sensation. Imagine walking in the mountains alone surrounded by nothing but nature, we live this experience unaware of our body and how we are in space and time. Now imagine suddenly in the distance you seeing a speck of what seems like another person coming towards you, your perception shifts and you become aware of the existence of yourself and your body, our body changes from unconsciously subjective to consciously objective as we become aware of an objective, embodied version of US. This is the objective self that others see and interact with. As the car ploughed into me, my consciousness of my body changed from blissfully unconscious to painfully conscious and from that moment on my body became an object, a disempowered objective body in the hands of " the experts ". From this moment on my body became something to test, probe, examine and judge; It was found wanting and the shame made me want to disassociate myself from THIS BODY which is not mine. This body exists and has crutches incorporated into it and when a nurse casually moves them, it feels like a violation of my body. Through intentionality I become only too aware of its shortfalls; reaching, getting up, shitting, pissing and masturbating are all intentions frustrated by an object body. My awareness of its " in space feeling " becomes heightened, where I am in the room, what is to my left, to my right, in front or behind all become of extreme importance. Although the doctors explained what they were doing at all times, I don't experience my body as tissue, nerves and tendons. Luckily I know my foot, as we've been introduced and this goes some way to helping make sense of my injury. But I wonder what sense would I make of a lung cancer, where I don't know my lung or multiple sclerosis where being told that axioms in the central nervous system do not have adequate myelin insulation. How could I make sense of that? In my opinion western medicine falls short of helping us make sense of a perceptual shift towards our own body and how we make sense of our illness. Medicine in general takes an anatomicopathalogical view and takes illness and disease from the domain of individual subjective lived experience and places it firmly in the physical world. This focus encourages acute care, rescue and repair, waging wars on disease and prolonging biological life at all costs.
Bodies My wife's recent stay in hospital got me thinking about our bodies, power relations and ho... more Bodies My wife's recent stay in hospital got me thinking about our bodies, power relations and how psychology in general has failed to consider our bodies as something more than either, a bunch of interconnected neurons in the Central nervous System, or simply as a vehicle to move our mind about from one place to another. Neither of these two descriptions gives a very accurate description of how it feels to me to have a body. The body has generally been the realms of the biological medical world where the body is an object to be studied, measured, compared, poked, prodded and analysed. Any relation between this object body and stuff going on in my mind has been purely coincidental. The problem started with René Descartes, a seventeenth century philosopher, who saw subjective human experience as being qualitatively different from the objective world of the physical universe, in which he included our bodies. This is what became known as the Cartesian Dualism. That is a separation of the mind and body, and has been debated backwards and forwards ever since. Bodies are great things, mine works pretty damn well considering all the stick that it's received over the years, in fact if it was a sensibly priced European car it would have probably given up the ghost a long time ago. But my body is changing, I don't mean in a sort of getting older type way, which obviously it is, but I'm becoming much more aware of it lately. Its limits, its shape, how it reacts to certain situations, all seem strange lately. When I was seventeen for example, I don't remember having a body. I took it so much for granted it always comfortably responded when I wanted it too and it didn't really give any problems. This type of body is what is known to the existential philosophers such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty as the subject body. That is the subjective feeling of having a body that interacts with the world. " The body is the vehicle of being in the world " says Merleau-Ponty, " Our body connects us to the world.. offers us a way to understand the world ". I hate the word " holistic " and its connotations with new age crackpots, pop psychology self help books and aromatherapy. But if we are to take Merleau-Ponty seriously we cant get much more holistic than that. Our body, our mind and the world interconnected. This is I fear where modern medicine fails to deliver, it is still bent of separating our mind and body, the individual from the social and maintaining our body as an object. Our body is linked to our feelings about our self, we are our bodies and illness is not just a body thing, it also affects everything about us. When things are going well and we take for granted our subject body we don't notice it. But it only takes illness and our body suddenly becomes an object, uncomfortable, painful and awkward. I recently read a great piece of research carried out by Linda Finlay (2003) where she interviewed a young mother who had been diagnosed Multiple Sclerosis. The patient described how she lost the feeling in her fingertips and had a sensation of numbness. Now not such a big deal you might say, and medically you'd be right. But if we take into account the terrible sensations she had as she tried to cuddle her children and the fact that if she rubbed her hand down her childs cheek, she could not feel it. This affected her at all levels as she wrestled with the idea that she wouldn't be able to feel her children again. This goes much further than illness being something related to our bodies, we can see that illness affects the way people feel about themselves and how they understand both themselves and the world around them. Present day medicine is still determined to
Perceived Infectability and Germ Aversion are two behavioural strategies that enable the individu... more Perceived Infectability and Germ Aversion are two behavioural strategies that enable the individual to assess personal risk and make behavioural changes to protect itself against contacts with possible infectious pathogens. The Perceived Vulnerability to Disease (PVD) self-report questionnaire is widely used to measure subjective perceived vulnerability to disease, but it has never been used during an ongoing pandemic. This study looks at individual differences in perceived vulnerability during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and specifically looks for differences between cultures, gender and age groups. Measurements of PVD were based on the mean scores of two factors, Perceived Infectability and Germ Aversion. Significant differences were found between Spanish-speaking and English-speaking groups, with the Spanish group showing higher levels of Germ Aversion and English-speaking group showing more perceived infectability. There was a significant difference between genders regarding Perceived Infectability, with men perceiving themselves more vulnerable than women. There were no significant gender differences for Germ Aversion. There were no significant differences between age groups, but there was a significant interaction between age*gender for Germ Aversion showing that the older the age group of men, the higher they scored on Germ Aversion, whilst the reverse was for women. The older the women’s age group the lower the score on Germ Aversion This is surprising as figures from the World Health Organisation show that both men and the elderly are especially vulnerable to dying from COVID-19. Recommendations include specific programmes aimed at raising awareness in both vulnerable groups.
Chris lives and works in Madrid, Spain where he runs a small psychotherapy practice for the Engli... more Chris lives and works in Madrid, Spain where he runs a small psychotherapy practice for the English speaking expat community in Madrid www.counsellingtherapistmadrid.com Our...journey requires us to be touched and shaken by what we find on the way and not to be afraid to discover our own limitations..., Uncertainties and doubts. It is only with such an attitude of openness and wonder that we can encounter the impenetrable everyday mysteries [of our world] (van Deurzen-
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Keywords
COVID-19, perceived vulnerability to disease, germ aversion, perceived infectibility, integrated compensatory immune system, emotions, disgust
Keywords
COVID-19, perceived vulnerability to disease, germ aversion, perceived infectibility, integrated compensatory immune system, emotions, disgust