Umeå universitets logga

This study is based on eight interviews with six people. What these people have in common is that their illnesses are not verifiable from a normal medical perspective.

The overall purpose of this study is to generally investigate the importance of music in everyday medical contexts, and specifically study how people with illness relate to their bodies, both in the encounter with standard medical care and with the use of music.

The primary philosophical inspiration comes from Maurice Merleau-Ponty, while the theory owes much to phenomenology. The descriptions of subjects’ interaction with the healthcare system is also analysed from the perspective of discourse theory.

The study shows that music ought to be understood holistically; a complex interplay between subject, object and context.

When patients are treated in the established healthcare, they must consciously adjust their body with makeup, clothing, tone of voice, and gesture in order to be trusted. This leads to the embodiment of the idea of disease, which makes them feel even worse.

The study also shows how music, when it’s chosen and enjoyed can actualize our healthy aspects. The use of music as self-treatment cultivates health-promoting habits which expand our worlds, and can thereby mitigate the illness we experience