Medical phenomenology and stroke rehabilitation: an introduction

This issue of Topics in Stroke Rehabilitation explores the theme of medical phenomenology and stroke rehabilitation through open peer commentary format. The theme is introduced by a brief summary and overview of phenomenology as a branch of philosophy whose focus is the development of methodology for describing and ordering human experience. The application of this philosophical approach to medicine in general and stroke rehabilitation in particular is then considered. An approach to patients informed by both phenomenology and science provides a more complete, holistic, and humanistic framework than science alone. Phenomenology helps the clinician to understand the importance of narrative, the process of adaptation at the level of the integrated whole person, and the important role of context in determining how recovery unfolds. Embodiment is presented as an organizing principle that links the nature of conscious experience in the lived body and the basic transformation in experience and function associated with an acquired pathology such as stroke. Finally, the nature of open peer commentary is considered and introduced in terms of how it has been specifically implemented in this issue of Topics in Stroke Rehabilitation.