Curriculum

Max Van Manen - The Pathic Nature of Inquiry and Nursing

In: Madjar, Irena and Walton, Jo (editors). Nursing and the Experience of Illness: Phenomenology in Practice. London: Routledge. pp. 17-35. If we want to be sensitive to the pathic nature of nursing and medical practice then we need to pursue forms of research that uses pathic language. Pathic questions cannot be answered by texts that primarily communicate cognitive meaning. And gnostic insights cannot produce pathic experience. To construct texts that can address and reflect on the experience of illness we need to get beyond the objectifying effects of naming the things of our world with labels that distance us from them. We need to write (and read) for tone and pathic understanding, and to this effect our words must be slow, new, single, and tentative.