Anne Harrington (Harvard University), (Medical) Culture under the Skin: Lessons from the History of Mind-Body Medicine
Commentator: Dafna Hirsch (The Open University of Israel)
Chair: Yossef Schwartz (Cohn Institute)
Within the framework of the Bar-Hillel Colloquium for the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science 2012-2013.
Monday, June 3rd, 2013, 18:00 PM
Gilman Building, Hall 449
Does human bodily experience – life under the skin – have a history? The lecture is an exploration of this question and its possibly wider implications for both history and science. The lecture will focus on the phenomena that hide in full view: ubiquitous but largely ignored, because we have all learned to think about them as ephemeral, fraudulent, pathological or all three: as "mere" hysteria, "just" psychosomatic, and so on. I wish to understand the historical processes that have led to such marginalization and to make the case that it has led to a profound missed opportunity. What if there were an entirely different way to understand these phenomena and their implications?