With a wealth of original research on the relevance of classical phenomenology to medicine, psychopathology, and the cognitive sciences, this volume includes a critique of Merleau-Ponty's work on mind-body dualism and new perspectives on Husserl's later works.

Offers original research on the relevance of classical phenomenology for medicine, Psychopathology and the cognitive sciences

Editors' Introduction, R.T. Jensen & D. Moran.- Part I: The Acting Body: Habit, Freedom and Imagination.- 1. Habit and Attention, K. Romdenh-Romluc.- 2. Affordances and Unreflective Freedom, E. Rietveld.- 3. Merleau-Ponty and the Transcendental Problem concerning Bodily Agency, R.T. Jensen.- 4. Imagination, Embodiment and Situatedness: Using Husserl to Dispel (Some) Notions of 'Off-Line Thinking', J. Jansen.- Part II: : The Body in Perception: Normality and the Constitution of Life-World.- 5. Transcendental Intersubjectivity and Normality: Constitution by Mortals, S. Heinämaa.- 6. The Body as a System of Concordance and the Perceptual World, I. de los Reyes Melero.- 7. Life-world as an Embodiment of Spiritual Meaning: The Constitutive Dynamics of Activity and Passivity in Husserl, S. Pulkkinen.- 8. Intersubjectivity, Interculturality, and Realities in Husserl Research Manuscripts on the Life-world (Hua XXXIX), T. Nenon.- Part III: The Body in Sickness and Health:Some Case Studies.- 9. Chronic Pain in Phenomenological/Anthropological Perspective, K. Morris.- 10. Inter-Subjectively Meaningful Symptoms in Anorexia, D. Legrand.- 11. The Alteration of Embodiment in Melancholia, S. Micali.- 12. The Structure of Interpersonal Experience, M. Ratcliffe.- Part IV: Intercorporeality and Intersubjectivity: Ideality, Language and Community.- 13. Facts and Fantasies - Embodiment and the early Formation of Selfhood, J. Taipale.- 14. Self-variation and Self-modification - or the different Ways of Being Other, C. Lobo.- 15. The Phenomenology of Embodiment: Intertwining and Reflexivity, D. Moran.- 16. Language as the Embodiment of Geometry, T. Baldwin.- 17. The Body Politic: Husserl and the Embodied Community, T. Miettinen.

The 17 original essays of this volume explore the relevance of the phenomenological approach to contemporary debates concerning the role of embodiment in our cognitive, emotional and practical life. The papers demonstrate the theoretical vitality and critical potential of the phenomenological tradition both through critically engagement with other disciplines (medical anthropology, psychoanalysis, psychiatry, the cognitive sciences) and through the articulation of novel interpretations of classical works in the tradition, in particular the works of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre. The concrete phenomena analyzed in this book include: chronic pain, anorexia, melancholia and depression.