ABSTRACT

Illness as a Work of Thought is a practical application of Foucault's archaeological and genealogical methods of the study of illness and modernity. From medicine and psychiatry to psychology and the social sciences, Monica Greco explores what the history of these different disciplines contributes to what we understand by the term 'psychosomatics' and analyses how the study of psychosomatic illness can transform the way we think of illness, subjectivity and the ethics and politics of health.

chapter 1|21 pages

The symptoms of truth

A historical search

chapter 2|16 pages

Hide and seek

Medicine and ‘somatization’

chapter 3|11 pages

The vital and the social

chapter 4|17 pages

Does psychosomatics exist?

An introduction

chapter 6|16 pages

Interpreting the bodily sign

chapter 9|7 pages

Conclusions

A political double-edge 1