Stroke Rehabilitation and the Phenomenological Reconstitution of the Self

Abstract

This commentary will apply the notions of constitution and “phenomenological introspection” developed by phenomenology’s founder Edmund Husserl to certain themes in Sharon Kaufman’s 1988 essay, “Toward a Phenomenology of Boundaries in Medicine: Chronic Illness Experience in the Case of Stroke.” The article will discuss how phenomenological analysis can provide important therapeutic insights about the lived experiences of stroke patients and their caregivers, especially as that experience is shaped in the immediate aftermath of a serious stroke. This article will also argue that phenomenology in and by itself is woefully inadequate for producing the kind of self-knowledge and political will needed to produce a socioeconomic environment that reasonably accommodates the needs of stroke patients. The article will end with a brief discussion of how an Eastern, particularly Buddhist, conception of the self is considerably more disability friendly than the one Westerners (phenomenologically) “constitute” and how the former’s more realistic understanding of the trajectory of human functioning and its inevitable decline over a lifespan offers a superior platform for developing disability policy and care than its Western counterpart.

Keywords:

• Buddhism
• disability
• phenomenology
• stroke