Eros and Illness

Synopsis

Eros And Illness Explores The Place Of Desire In Illness. We Urgently Need Such An Exploration Because Illness Is No Longer Simply A Natural Feature Of The Human Condition. Most People Fall Ill, But Illness Now Falls Under The Supervision Of Biomedicine, A Science-based, State-regulated System Dominated By The New Molecular Gaze. The Use Of A Person's Distinctive Genetic Data To Guide Treatment And To Forestall Disease--called Personalized Medicine-- Reflects How The Molecular Gaze Can Produce Valuable Advances In Biomedical Healthcare. What Does This Indispensable Super-vision, However, Tend To Overlook? Eros And Illness Proposes That Biomedicine Ignores, In Clinical Practice And In Bench Science, The Powerful Role Of Desire In Illness. Desire, Always Double-edged, Requires Attention Because It Can Do Both Great Harm And Great Good. Patients, Caregivers, Family Members, And Physicians, As They Recognize The Role Of Desire, Gain Access To A Power That Can Make The Passage Through Illness Much Less Onerous And Far More Healing: Truly Personalized. -- Introduction: What Is Eros? -- Part One. The Contraries: The Ambush: An Erotics Of Illness -- Un-forgetting Asklepios: Medical Eros And Its Lineage -- Not-knowing: Medicine In The Dark -- Part Two. The Stories: Varieties Of Erotic Experience: Five Illness Narratives -- Eros Modigliani: Assenting To Life -- The Infinite Faces Of Pain: Eros And Ethics -- Part Three. The Dilemmas: The Black-swan Syndrome: Probable Improbabilities -- Light As Environment: How Not To Love Nature -- The Spark Of Life: Appearances / Disappearances -- Conclusion: Altered States. David B. Morris. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 303-333) And Index.