Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Setting out: using this book
- 1 Locating the field: introducing health psychology
- 2 Thinking about health and the body
- 3 Choosing lifestyles
- 4 Controlling the body
- 5 Becoming ill
- 6 Comprehending bodily experience
- 7 Interacting with health professionals
- 8 Treating illness
- 9 Being ill
- 10 Dying
- 11 Relocating the field: critical health psychology
- Glossary
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
- References
2 - Thinking about health and the body
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Setting out: using this book
- 1 Locating the field: introducing health psychology
- 2 Thinking about health and the body
- 3 Choosing lifestyles
- 4 Controlling the body
- 5 Becoming ill
- 6 Comprehending bodily experience
- 7 Interacting with health professionals
- 8 Treating illness
- 9 Being ill
- 10 Dying
- 11 Relocating the field: critical health psychology
- Glossary
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
- References
Summary
Health is becoming a normative super-category, with multiple meanings and a multi-dimensional field of action: health is in everything, and everything is in health. It has been said that health is one of the new synonyms for happiness.
(Herzlich, 1995, p. 169)Talking about health is tantamount to talking about life.
(Pierret, 1995, p. 183)Learning objectives
This chapter outlines ideas about health and the body, and how people think about these constructs. It will set notions of health and the body within social and cultural contexts. By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:
describe different definitions of health;
explain the interrelationship between health and illness;
compare and contrast ‘lay’ and ‘expert’ understandings of health;
describe how notions of health and the body vary across social categories;
define embodiment and outline its importance for understanding health;
discuss the relevance of the body for health psychology;
consider the ways in which knowledge about health and the body is socially and historically constructed.
What does it mean to you to be healthy? Are you healthy right now? Why or why not? How would you define health? Is your definition likely to be the same as your friends' definitions? What about your grandmother's or father's definitions? Are your ideas about illness related to your definition of health? Are ideas about health important? Before we study health as a topic, we need to be clear about what it means.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Health PsychologyA Critical Introduction, pp. 40 - 69Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006