In this post, I share a monologue I wrote while coming to understand the implications of using a hermeneutic model in osteopathic practice, particularly when using hands-on assessment and treatment approaches. I was thinking about the concept of hermeneutic realism and how it helps me understand what the phenomenological rallying cry, ‘back to the things themselves’ means - and applying this to the Mitsein I share with my patients.

Previously, I have discussed the concept of meaning in hermeneutic healthcare as an ontological partner to being – to have existence is to be engaged in sense-making (with meaning as the property that emerges from the interaction between a being and its environment). In this post, I am going to consider the structure of meaning as it pertains to health, particularly within a healthcare context, by discussing its ontology within two contrasting healthcare models (with an upfront caveat that these models are crude simplifications).

The benefit of a non-dualistic ontological stance is that it liberates the phenomenologist from the constant challenge of having to agree that there is a distinction between internal things and external things, and in their manner of appearance to human consciousness.

In this blog post I wish to explore further how we can model a form of hermeneutic healthcare - one that may involve touch - in the light of both enactivist, embodied theories of consciousness and communication, as well as the hermeneutic model proposed by Frederik Svenaeus (see Blogs 8 and 9).

In this post, I extend my thinking on the model of enactive, embodied communication presented in Part 1, by talking about its relevance to healthcare, particularly healthcare which is oriented towards hermeneusis (sense-making) - and that which involves the therapeutic use of touch.

Before diving straight into the subject of “enactive, embodied communication”, I must begin by explaining something about the non-dualist ontological principles of phenomenology and hermeneutic realism, by way of introduction to an account of embodied consciousness and enactive communication.

A detour, before discussing phenomenological models of embodied communication in healthcare settings, via some further consideration of the boat-like bone, the scaphoid. What is the real bone, really?

A self-employed patient has a long drive to attend a trade event. He has fallen and injured his wrist which is painful and swollen so he books an appointment with his GP for the next day. A common enough scenario.