TY - JOUR
T1 - Inner posture as aspect of global meaning in healthcare
T2 - a conceptual analysis
AU - Littooij, Elsbeth
AU - Widdershoven, Guy A.M.
AU - Leget, Carlo J.W.
AU - Dekker, Joost
PY - 2019/6/15
Y1 - 2019/6/15
N2 - Based on our empirical research on global meaning in people with spinal cord injury and people with stroke, we formulated ‘inner posture’ as a concept in rehabilitation. Inner posture, as we concluded from our empirical data, refers to the way in which people bear what cannot be changed. It helps them to live with their injury. Considering that much has already been written about meaning from a variety of disciplines, the question arises whether the concept of inner posture adds something new to the existing literature, or is just another name for a phenomenon that has already been described before in different terms. In this paper, we aim to investigate this and to clarify our conceptualization, by comparing the concept of inner posture with influential concepts in healthcare literature which seem to be more or less related. In the work of Puchalski regarding spirituality, Pargament regarding religion, Eliott regarding hope and Frankl regarding attitude, we found definitions and descriptions that seemed to come close to the phenomenon we refer to as inner posture. Because these concepts have various theoretical backgrounds, the comparison can help to better understand our concept of inner posture, through a process of dialogue between traditions, following Gadamer’s notion of dialogue as fusion of horizons of understanding. We conclude that inner posture differs from the other concepts in several ways. Some of these differences are more fundamental, other are partial. This suggests that we identified a new perspective on a phenomenon partially described earlier. The comparison also inspired us to slightly adjust our definition and to formulate new research questions.
AB - Based on our empirical research on global meaning in people with spinal cord injury and people with stroke, we formulated ‘inner posture’ as a concept in rehabilitation. Inner posture, as we concluded from our empirical data, refers to the way in which people bear what cannot be changed. It helps them to live with their injury. Considering that much has already been written about meaning from a variety of disciplines, the question arises whether the concept of inner posture adds something new to the existing literature, or is just another name for a phenomenon that has already been described before in different terms. In this paper, we aim to investigate this and to clarify our conceptualization, by comparing the concept of inner posture with influential concepts in healthcare literature which seem to be more or less related. In the work of Puchalski regarding spirituality, Pargament regarding religion, Eliott regarding hope and Frankl regarding attitude, we found definitions and descriptions that seemed to come close to the phenomenon we refer to as inner posture. Because these concepts have various theoretical backgrounds, the comparison can help to better understand our concept of inner posture, through a process of dialogue between traditions, following Gadamer’s notion of dialogue as fusion of horizons of understanding. We conclude that inner posture differs from the other concepts in several ways. Some of these differences are more fundamental, other are partial. This suggests that we identified a new perspective on a phenomenon partially described earlier. The comparison also inspired us to slightly adjust our definition and to formulate new research questions.
KW - Attitude
KW - Conceptual analysis
KW - Global meaning
KW - Healthcare
KW - Hope
KW - Inner posture
KW - Rehabilitation
KW - Religion
KW - Spirituality
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85050793159&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-018-9853-y
DO - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-018-9853-y
M3 - Article
C2 - 30054860
SN - 1386-7423
VL - 22
SP - 201
EP - 209
JO - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy
JF - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy
IS - 2
ER -