Event overview
Agency, embodiment and enactment in psychosomatic theory and practice Prof. Laurence Kirmayer (McGill University) Discussant: Dr Robbie Duschinsky (Cambridge)
Psychosomatic explanation invokes a social gray zone in which ambiguities and conflicts about agency, causality, and moral responsibility abound. This reflects a deep-seated dualism in Western ontology and concepts of personhood that plays out in psychiatric research, theory and practice. New forms of this dualism are evident in philosophical attacks on Engel’s biopsychosocial approach, which was a mainstay of earlier psychosomatic theory, and in the current RDOC research program of the US NIMH. Recent work in cognitive science on enactivism can shed light on the ways this ontology is rationalized, embodied and embedded in situated practices. This presentation will explore the utility of this enactive paradigm for understanding the persistence of dualism in psychosomatic medicine and psychiatry. An approach to integrating folk psychology (as narrative practice) with embodied neurophenomenology, and ecosocial systems thinking points the way toward an integrative view of psychosomatic medicine and psychiatry, aware of its own political position and commitments.
Laurence J. Kirmayer, MD, FRCPC, FCAHS, FRSC is James McGill Professor and Director, Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, McGill University. He is Editor-in-Chief of Transcultural Psychiatry, and Director of the Culture & Mental Health Research Unit at the Institute of Community and Family Psychiatry, Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. His current research includes studies on: culturally based, family centered mental health promotion for Indigenous youth; the use of cultural formulation in cultural consultation; and the place of culture in global mental health. He co-edited the volumes, Understanding Trauma: Integrating Biological, Clinical, and Cultural Perspectives (Cambridge University Press), Healing Traditions: The Mental Health of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada (University of British Columbia Press), Cultural Consultation: Encountering the Other in Mental Health Care (Springer), DSM-5 Handbook for the Cultural Formulation Interview (APPI), and Re-Visioning Psychiatry: Cultural Phenomenology, Critical Neuroscience and Global Mental Health (Cambridge). He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and of the Royal Society of Canada (Academy of Social Sciences).
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 7 Apr 2017 | 4:30pm - 6:30pm |
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