In a scientific report published 2003 a psychiatric research group in Sweden proposed to the National Board of Health and Welfare that a new diagnosis with the name "exhaustion disorder" ("utmattningssyndrom") (ED) should be created in the Swedish diagnostic system. Two years later the board approved the proposal and the diagnosis was registred in the Swedish version of ICD-10. Since 2005 the prevalence of ED in Sweden has gradually increased and at the current date more than 40 000 people are on long-term sick leave as a result of the diagnosis. Interestingly, there is no corresponding medical diagnosis outside of Sweden, although patients in other countries are declared ill with similar symptoms, receiving other diagnoses, such as burnout, depression, acute stress or adjustment disorder. In this paper, the history of ED is told and an attempt is made to answer the question why it has come to exist and prevail in Sweden despite no evidence of validity. The analysis is performed by scrutinizing the criteria for the diagnosis and how it has been connected to the granting of sick leave in the Swedish social insurance system. In conjunction with this, a phenomenological analysis is provided of how ED has been named and interpreted in the Swedish society as a particular form of life-narrative pattern. This pattern of break-down and rebuild of a more in-tune-with-nature version of oneself in recovering from ED is found in Swedish popular culture, and it is supported by academic studies, self-help books and the strategies of rehabcenters.

Kay Toombs’ The Meaning of Illness: A Phenomenological Account of the Different Perspectives of Physician and Patient (1992) is not the first book in the series of Philosophy and Medicine to contain chapters referring to and making use of works in the phenomenological tradition. You find phenomenological perspectives in chapters published in earlier volumes of the series, mainly addressing questions related to the status and nature of the lived body, that is: the body as the point of view of everyday experience in contrast to the body as a biological organism. However, to my best knowledge, Toombs’ book it is the first monograph – not only in this series but in the English language – to deal explicitly with the phenomenology of illness, and, also, to relate this perspective of the patient to the medical encounter and the point of view of the physician. In her endeavor, Toombs makes use of arguments found in works by first-generation German and French phenomenologists, including works containing attempts to deal with the topic of phenomenology of health and illness, which is, as a matter of fact, a rather rare topic in the phenomenological tradition.

Professional empathy in health care is a feeling with, about, and for the patient that opens up a world to be explored by way of imagination and dialogue. The concern is professional in nature because it deals with the patient precisely as a person the health care professional has the duty to aid in respect of her education and position. The biomedical paradigm needs to be balanced and combined in the clinical encounter with an empathic perspective, focusing upon the experiences and everyday life of the patient, since the doctor and other health care professionals meet not only with a potentially diseased biological organism, but also with a person who is suffering and in need of professional help.

This paper explores the process of aging from a phenomenological perspective. Supplementing the model of becoming old found in Simone de Beauvoir’s work with a phenomenology of human suffering and flourishing, it asks whether it is possible to lead a good life in the process of becoming old. Is it possible to flourish while experiencing bodily waning? Is it possible to flourish while experiencing the shrinking of one’s everyday world and the passing away of close others? Aging, at least in its protracted phases, appears to become full of suffering rather than flourishing. What are the prospects of finding meaningful life projects despite old age? By making use of insight found in Heidegger and other phenomenologists the paper tries to develop a slightly different view on aging than the one found in Beauvoir, stressing the importance of embodied experiences and life choices, which not only depend upon societal oppression and being objectified by others, but also upon processes of nature and the possibilities of an intergenerational intersubjectivity. Resources for this project is found in the philosophy of affectivity developed by Heidegger and other phenomenologists of facticity, such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Charles Taylor, Helmuth Plessner and Hannah Arendt.

In this article I take a look at Drew Leder’s recent book The Healing Body: Creative Responses to Illness, Aging, and Affliction in view of his earlier scholarship and try to understand in what ways the author’s explorations of bodily phenomenology have developed and changed. I argue that Leder is attempting to cross breed phenomenology with critical theory (intersectionality studies) in a way that will appeal to many readers but is ultimately flawed. His attempts to marry phenomenology with eastern religious movements are also scrutinized and found more original and less problematic, although they are hard to evaluate from a secular point of view. Despite this critique, the way the book identifies various healing strategies by highlighting a number of bodily attitudes is found rewarding and helpful for persons suffering from chronic pain.