Health: A Critique of Clinicians' Views and a Transgressive Model Based on Imagination

Abstract

In its first part, the article offers a critique of current definitions of health advanced in medical scholarship. It identifies and discusses their major problematic themes (e.g., wholeness, balance, adaptation, activity), and how these are also relevant for the dominant, professional understanding of mental health. Patient reports are used throughout to illustrate both the argument against the normative type of health that is proposed and operated with in clinical contexts, and, in the second part of the article, the model put forth as a solution. The latter is called ‘transgressiveʼ because it is based on transgressing normative boundaries that are culturally and professionally set in place to establish discrete and value-charged identities for medically relevant realities—such as ‘diseaseʼ, ‘bodyʼ, ‘personʼ, ‘healthʼ—and that are not facilitating either clinical or patient work conducive to lived, personal health. New concepts are introduced (‘autobiologyʼ, ‘health-diversityʼ, ‘poietic injusticeʼ) to argue for: health as a personal creation, a position of diversity about health processes or states, and the importance of training the imagination in the clinical professions. The transgressive model of health is intended as a conceptual tool for practical, clinical application by healthcare practitioners.