Page 53 - Contribution To Phenomenology

46 RICHARD M. ZANER

the person's condition: family members, those in the person's circle of
intimates (especially close friends and associates), persons in the wider
social ambiance, but also the physician, nurses, and other providers
helping to care for the person. Hence, to speak of "the experience and
meaning of illness," as many have done ([2]; [16]; [24]; [45]), is
necessarily to face a highly complex phenomenon, as too few have
recognized ([43], pp. 29-52).
Nor is this all. As Schutz has demonstrated, every situational
participant experiences and interprets the encounter within his or her own
biographical situation ([29 I], pp. 243-247): typifications, life-plans,
undergirding moral and/or religious frameworks, etc. These encounters are
also socially framed by prevailing social values, as well as by written and
unwritten professional codes, governmental regulations, hospital policies,
unit or departmental protocols, etc.—any or all of which may and often
do contribute to **what's going on" in any speciJSc case.
Finally, cautious probing suggests that experience and meaning are still
more complicated. Again, consider only a patient and her physician. She,
like every patient, is a self and thus is essentially a reflexive being. Briefly,
this signifies ([39], pp. 144-164) that the patient experiences and interprets
her own impairment. She also experiences and interprets the physician's
experiences and interpretations, including his experiences and interpreta-
tions of her (how she thought to experience and interpret the doctor,
her illness, etc.)—and both she and her physician are, in the nature of
the case, aware of, though not always focally attentive to this very
complexity. In a word, the relationship is complex and reflexive:
minimally, each experiences and interprets the other, their respective
interpretations, and at the same time within their relationship, each
experiences and interprets the relationship itself ([15]; [39], pp. 199-216).
For example, the pregnant woman in the one case not only ex-
perienced her pregnancy and her developing fetus, but this experience
was complexly textured by the ways in which she experienced and
interpreted what her physicians (husband, and others) told her. Similarly,
her physicians experienced and interpreted her "anger" as directed at
them and as about "abortion." In some respects, moreover, both
experienced and interpreted the relationship itself Regarding diagnostic
data, for instance, she said "I know they're only trying to do their best"
(i.e. she interpreted the relation as "they are trying to help"); and her
physician told me, "She seems to think we're being deliberately unclear"
(i.e. the relation was "not going well").