Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 3, 2026

Observing the Transformation of Bodily Self-consciousness in the Squeeze-machine Experiment
Published on: March 8, 2019
Poststructuralist musings on the mind/body question in health care
1School of Nursing, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut 06269, USA. Laura.dzurec@uconn.edu
Abstract:
Consideration of mind/body phenomena in health care has been grounded in the constraints of overt and covert paradigmatic assumptions and the mechanisms of power/knowledge that poststructuralists pose as characteristic of empiricism. This article examines the development and conceptualization of mind/body phenomena within the context of evidence considered fitting in health care, that is, within the disciplinary matrix of empiricism. Discussion focuses particularly on inference, probability, and cause and effect, significant components of empiricism, as they have influenced the direction of the mind/body debate in health care during the 20th and early 21st centuries. A focus on disciplinary structure and rules of force subtly grounding empiricism may be the best we have for grasping the place of a phenomenon like mind/body within nursing and the health care disciplines, if such grasping is warranted at all.
Related Concept Videos
Reason and Intuition
Theoretical Foundations of Nursing Practice
Theories provide a perspective to assess patients' conditions and organize data and methods. They also assist in analyzing and interpreting information. They represent a...
Concepts of Health and Illness
Dimensions of Health and Illness
Structuralism
Titchener's approach to structuralism was unique. He employed introspection, a method...
Structure of Self
Components of the Mind: Id, Ego, and Superego

