On 13th May the CHHS was joined by Dr Anna Luise Kirkengen who presented a talk on the lived experience of violation during childhood and adolescence, reported by two women, as the vantage point for exploring the relationship between their experience and their health. The violation histories of these women, as related by the persons, was juxtaposed to their sickness histories, as documented in their medical records. This approach allowed for a comparison between biomedical and biographical accounts of serious disease development.
Kirkengen argued that when applying a framework of the phenomenological notion of the lived body, including the details of embodied integrity violation, on the biomedical presentation and documentation of the diseased body, a striking discrepancy becomes apparent. This particular kind of “gap”, not primarily in terms of valid knowledge but in terms of appropriate understanding, represents a source for medical wrongdoing, eventually resulting in an involuntary yet salient contribution to chronification and disability. Such a result calls for integrating a phenomenological understanding and terminology with the biomedical to render the lived body comprehensible for health professionals.
Contact: Dr Anna Luise Kirkengen – anna.l.kirkengen@ntnu.no