The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, And The Human Condition
From one of America's most celebrated psychiatrists, the book that has taught generations of healers why healing the sick is about more than just diagnosing their illness.



Modern medicine treats sick patients like broken machines — figure out what is physically wrong, fix it, and send the patient on their way. But humans are not machines. When we are ill, we experience our illness: we become scared, distressed, tired, weary. Our illnesses are not just biological conditions, but human ones.

It was Arthur Kleinman, a Harvard psychiatrist and anthropologist, who saw this truth when most of his fellow doctors did not. Based on decades of clinical experience studying and treating chronic illness, The Illness Narratives makes a case for interpreting the illness experience of patients as a core feature of doctoring.

Before Being Mortal, there was The Illness Narratives. It remains today a prescient and passionate case for bridging the gap between patient and practitioner.
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The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, And The Human Condition
From one of America's most celebrated psychiatrists, the book that has taught generations of healers why healing the sick is about more than just diagnosing their illness.



Modern medicine treats sick patients like broken machines — figure out what is physically wrong, fix it, and send the patient on their way. But humans are not machines. When we are ill, we experience our illness: we become scared, distressed, tired, weary. Our illnesses are not just biological conditions, but human ones.

It was Arthur Kleinman, a Harvard psychiatrist and anthropologist, who saw this truth when most of his fellow doctors did not. Based on decades of clinical experience studying and treating chronic illness, The Illness Narratives makes a case for interpreting the illness experience of patients as a core feature of doctoring.

Before Being Mortal, there was The Illness Narratives. It remains today a prescient and passionate case for bridging the gap between patient and practitioner.
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The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, And The Human Condition

The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, And The Human Condition

by Arthur Kleinman
The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, And The Human Condition

The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, And The Human Condition

by Arthur Kleinman

Paperback

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Overview

From one of America's most celebrated psychiatrists, the book that has taught generations of healers why healing the sick is about more than just diagnosing their illness.



Modern medicine treats sick patients like broken machines — figure out what is physically wrong, fix it, and send the patient on their way. But humans are not machines. When we are ill, we experience our illness: we become scared, distressed, tired, weary. Our illnesses are not just biological conditions, but human ones.

It was Arthur Kleinman, a Harvard psychiatrist and anthropologist, who saw this truth when most of his fellow doctors did not. Based on decades of clinical experience studying and treating chronic illness, The Illness Narratives makes a case for interpreting the illness experience of patients as a core feature of doctoring.

Before Being Mortal, there was The Illness Narratives. It remains today a prescient and passionate case for bridging the gap between patient and practitioner.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781541647121
Publisher: Basic Books
Publication date: 10/13/2020
Pages: 336
Product dimensions: 6.40(w) x 8.55(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Arthur Kleinman is professor of medical anthropology in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is also the Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University. A member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Kleinman is the author of numerous books, including The Soul of Care, Patients and Healers, and What Really Matters.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

Preface to the 2020 Edition xvii

Acknowledgments xxiii

Authors Note xxv

1 The Meaning of Symptoms and Disorders 1

2 The Personal and Social Meanings of Illness 29

3 The Vulnerability of Pain and the Pain of Vulnerability 55

4 The Pain of Living 75

5 Chronic Pain: The Frustrations of Desire 89

6 Neurasthenia: Weakness and Exhaustion in the United States and China 103

7 Conflicting Explanatory Models in the Care of the Chronically III 127

8 Aspiration and Victory: Coping with Chronic Illness 145

9 Illness unto Death 155

10 The Stigma and Shame of Illness 169

11 The Social Context of Chronicity 183

12 The Creation of Disease: Factitious Illness 201

13 Hypochondriasis: The Ironic Disease 209

14 The Healers: Varieties of Experience in Doctoring 227

15 A Method for the Care of the Chronically Ill 251

16 The Challenge of a Meaning-Centered Model for Medical Education and Practice 277

References 293

Index 301

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