The healing relationship

pp. 89-119

in: Toombs, The meaning of illness, Berlin, Springer, 1992

Abstract

The foregoing phenomenological analysis has demonstrated that illness and body mean something significantly and qualitatively different to the patient and to the physician. This difference in perspectives is not simply a matter of different levels of knowledge but, rather, it is a reflection of the fundamental and decisive distinction between the lived experience of illness and the naturalistic account of such experience. It has been further noted that this difference in understanding between physician and patient is an important factor in medical practice ¡ª a factor which has an impact not only on the extent to which doctors and patients can successfully communicate with one another on the basis of a shared understanding of the patient's illness but, additionally, on the extent to which the physician can address the patient's suffering in an optimal fashion.