Mind And Body

4 Pages 894 Words

Mind – body dualism is defined as the mind and the body being separate but connected. Meaning the body is complex and made up of a bunch of different parts. The mind is private and is full of emotions and feelings. In the essay called “Lived Body”, by Drew Leder, he says that one of the consequences of Cartesian dualism is our understanding of our bodies as more dead than alive. By this he means that we see and examine the body as if the person were dead. “…the living patient is often treated in a cadaverous or machine-like fashion” (page 121). When a person goes to see a doctor for a medical reason, the physical examination is similar to when a pathologist does an autopsy. “The patient is asked to assume a corpse-like pose, flat, passive, naked, mute” (page 121). Throughout the physical exam, the patient rarely talks because the physician is concentrating on listening for possible heart complications, problems with the lungs or feeling for abnormalities in the stomach. Leder suggests that the doctors treat the patients as machines. “Even when called upon to act or respond, it is largely in the machine-mode; the knee is tapped to provoke reflexes…” (page 121). “At the core of modern medical practice is the Cartesian revelation: the living body can be treated as essentially no different from a machine” (page 121). Leder thinks that this belief will have consequences.
Leder says “the machine-model of the body has given rise not only to therapeutic triumphs but to limitations and distortions in medical practice. For example, it is by now a cliché that modern medicine often neglects the import of psychosocial factors in the etiology and treatment of disease” (page 121). Meaning that it is almost expected that doctors neglect certain conditions. Not because it is the correct way to make a diagnosis or that those little details do not matter. Disregard of those details is expected because doctors see patients...