Obesity, objectification, and identity

the encounter with the body as an object in obesity

Donald Moss

pp. 179-196

in: Drew Leder (ed), The body in medical thought and practice, Berlin, Springer, 1992

Abstract

Since early in this century researchers in philosophy, psychiatry, neurology, and internal medicine have applied a phenomenological approach to investigate how human beings experience the body in normal and morbid states. Their research demonstrates characteristic transformations in human existence accompanying various diseases and disabilities. E. Straus [39, 41], F.J.J. Buytendijk [12], V. Von Gebsattel [45], V. Von Weizsäcker [46], H. Plügge [32, 33], and M. Boss [6] are the principal European pioneers who marked out this field of study, variously using such designations as "medical anthropology", "anthropological physiology", and "phenomenology of medicine". R.M. Zaner [48, 49], O. Sacks [35], M.A. Murphy [30], S.F. Spicker [37, 38], D. Moss [25–27], and H. Jonas [18] represent an expanding circle of researchers continuing these directions on the American scene, again at the interface between philosophy and the medical clinic.