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It is possible to eclipse a felt sense of physical dread or the expansive feeling of flourishing with the cognitive habit of universalizing our experience. We belong to a culture that surrenders the sacred vitality and dynamism of sensed experience to critical analytic cognition. Cognitional theories and emotions-as-cognitions dominate our understanding of the self; physiologic and anatomic models of normalcy dictate our approach to the body; socio-economic models of global utility shape the common good; abstract moral principles eclipse the holistic sensation of advance towards flourishing. Following Thomas Aquinas on the sensory nature, this book outlines a different approach, in which the depth that lies under cognition and emotion is exposed, allowing human movement to come into focus. Such movements as recoil, contraction, embrace, glee, letting go, crying, etc.--the passions--arise from the sensory interiority, where imprinted experiences of body memory are concealed and shaped by the rational/non-intellectual cogitative sense with meanings of harm and/or wellness. When movement is retained as sensory experience and not universalized by the mind, then the experience of a sufferer becomes permissible in ethics discourse as an expressed felt-sense of emerging mysteriously from dread and advancing towards flourishing.

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9781725272507

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Traditionally, physicians have been taught that suffering was something to be 'witnessed objectively' and then 'alleviated' through action. Using the theological perspective of Thomas Aquinas and approaches from narrative-based medicine, Dr. Ann Sirek offers a model of care that prioritizes the removal of obstacles to personal agency and flourishing. This approach incorporates the traditional need for medical meaning making, while honoring the practical knowledge that only the body and the five senses can provide, for both patient and healer. The possibility of transformation occurs through a 'visceral, ' embodied accompaniment. This book reminds us why theology should not be excluded from the company of bioethics and philosophy in our growing field of medical humanities. --Allan Peterkin, Professor of Psychiatry and Family Medicine and Head of the Program in Health, Arts, and Humanities, University of Toronto Dr. Sirek highlights the poverty of dealing with human suffering with only the traditional rational and detached scientific approach. She develops a model that is attuned to the personal story of sufferers, with their emotions, feelings, and experiences. This theological focus on the embodied and sensory nature of human experience is also applicable to other fields. In biblical studies, a narrative reading of texts with this sensitivity and awareness helps to unlock the deeper meaning of the symbols, images, and rhetoric. --Scott M. Lewis, SJ, Associate Professor of New Testament, Regis College, Toronto School of Theology Sirek re-visions the meaning of patient-centered practices for transformative healing by engaging a brilliant tapestry of voices from across disciplines in light of her own commitments and insights as a physician and theologian. Her rereading of Thomas Aquinas on the psychosomatic self invites and challenges all teachers and practitioners dedicated to authentic caregiving and healing to learn the praxis of sustained engagement with the experience of the sufferer as pathway to empowerment, wellness, and transformation. --Jennifer Constantine Jackson, Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Villanova University Ann Sirek uses Aquinas' understanding of the sensuality of human experience to gain a new perspective 'from below' on the condition of the sufferer precisely in her immobility, silences, and broken words. Sirek accompanies the sufferer as she gropes toward a self-narrative open to the spirit of resurrection and the freedom of movement it enables. She writes as both experienced physician and theological ethicist, offering fresh insight to medical clinicians and theological ethicists alike. --Robert Sweetman, H. Evan Runner Chair in the History of Philosophy, Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto Visceral Resonance is an academically challenging work calling for an ethical shift in medical practice from the view from the top to a view from the bottom, an inversion supported by a Thomist perspective. It's written from compelling compassion that unwaveringly believes a new perspective is required to address suffering that can find flourishing and well-being beyond the presenting trial. Here you will find the heart of a physician and the mind of a theologian. --GailMarie Henderson, Faculty, Thorneloe University, Sudbury, Ontario

Author Information

Ann Sirek is an independent scholar in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where, at the University of Toronto, she first studied medicine and then more recently pursued her doctorate in theological ethics. She continues to practice internal medicine part-time in an impoverished part of Toronto, and to pursue scholarly writing in Thomistic ethics in dialogue with her academic colleagues at the University of Toronto and beyond. David B. Burrell, CSC, Hesburgh Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Theology at the University of Notre Dame, has served as Professor of Comparative Theology at Tangaza College, Nairobi. His most recent work is Towards a Jewish-Christian-Muslim Theology (2011).

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