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Inscriptions of violence: Societal and medical neglect of child abuse – impact on life and health

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Abstract

Objective

A sickness history from General Practice will be unfolded with regard to its implicit lived meanings. This experiential matrix will be analyzed with regard to its medico-theoretical aspects.

Method

The analysis is grounded in a phenomenology of the body. The patient Katherine Kaplan lends a particular portrait to the dynamics that are enacted in the interface between socially silenced domestic violence and the theoretical assumptions of human health as these inform the clinical practice of health care.

Results

By applying an understanding of sickness that transcends the mind-body split, a concealed and complex logic emerges. This logic is embedded in a nexus of the impact of childhood abuse experience and the medical disinterest in subjective experiences and their impact on selfhood and health. Its core is twofold: the violation of embodiment resulting from intra-familial abuse and existential threat, and the embodiment of violation resulting from social rules and the theoretically blinded medical gaze.

Conclusion

A considerable medical investment, apparently conducted in a correct and consistent manner as to diagnostic and therapeutic measures, results in the complete incapacitation of a young physician.

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Acknowledgement

This text is a result of a co-operation between a young woman whom I have named Katherine Kaplan, and myself. She has agreed to the means applied for granting her full anonymity. She has authorized the present version and allowed its publication. I am very grateful for both her contribution and her permission. In addition, I feel indebted for help and support during my work with this manuscript to Dr. Linn Getz, assistant professor at the Department of Community Medicine, University of Trondheim, Norway, and Professor Jóhann A. Sigurdsson, Department of Family Medicine, University of Reykjavik, Iceland.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Community Medicine, University of Tromsø, Tromsø, Norway

    Anna Luise Kirkengen

  2. Department of Community Medicine, University of Trondheim, Trondheim, Norway

    Anna Luise Kirkengen

  3. Center for Health Promotion, University Hospital Akershus, Nordbyhagen, Norway

    Anna Luise Kirkengen

  4. Stroemsborgveien 35 A, N-0287, Oslo, Norway

    Anna Luise Kirkengen

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Kirkengen, A.L. Inscriptions of violence: Societal and medical neglect of child abuse – impact on life and health. Med Health Care and Philos 11, 99–110 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-007-9076-0

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