Nathan Carlin – författare

It is often said that bioethics emerged from theology in the 1960s, and that since then it has grown into a secular enterprise, yielding to other disciplines and professions such as philosophy and law. During the 1970s and 1980s, a kind of secularism in biomedicine and related areas was encouraged by the need for a neutral language that could provide common ground for guiding clinical practice and research protocols. Tom Beauchamp and James Childress, in their pivotal The Principles of Biomedical Ethics, achieved this neutrality through an approach that came to be known as "principlist bioethics." In Pastoral Aesthetics, Nathan Carlin critically engages Beauchamp and Childress by revisiting the role of religion in bioethics and argues that pastoral theologians can enrich moral imagination in bioethics by cultivating an aesthetic sensibility that is theologically-informed, psychologically-sophisticated, therapeutically-oriented, and experientially-grounded. To achieve these ends, Carlin employs Paul Tillich's method of correlation by positioning four principles of bioethics with four images of pastoral care, drawing on a range of sources, including painting, fiction, memoir, poetry, journalism, cultural studies, clinical journals, classic cases in bioethics, and original pastoral care conversations. What emerges is a form of interdisciplinary inquiry that will be of special interest to bioethicists, theologians, and chaplains.

It is often said that bioethics emerged from theology in the 1960s, and that since then it has grown into a secular enterprise, yielding to other disciplines and professions such as philosophy and law. During the 1970s and 1980s, a kind of secularism in biomedicine and related areas was encouraged by the need for a neutral language that could provide common ground for guiding clinical practice and research protocols. Tom Beauchamp and James Childress, in their pivotal The Principles of Biomedical Ethics, achieved this neutrality through an approach that came to be known as "principlist bioethics." In Pastoral Aesthetics, Nathan Carlin critically engages Beauchamp and Childress by revisiting the role of religion in bioethics and argues that pastoral theologians can enrich moral imagination in bioethics by cultivating an aesthetic sensibility that is theologically-informed, psychologically-sophisticated, therapeutically-oriented, and experientially-grounded. To achieve these ends, Carlin employs Paul Tillich''s method of correlation by positioning four principles of bioethics with four images of pastoral care, drawing on a range of sources, including painting, fiction, memoir, poetry, journalism, cultural studies, clinical journals, classic cases in bioethics, and original pastoral care conversations. What emerges is a form of interdisciplinary inquiry that will be of special interest to bioethicists, theologians, and chaplains.

It is often said that bioethics emerged from theology in the 1960s, and that since then it has grown into a secular enterprise, yielding to other disciplines and professions such as philosophy and law. During the 1970s and 1980s, a kind of secularism in biomedicine and related areas was encouraged by the need for a neutral language that could provide common ground for guiding clinical practice and research protocols. Tom Beauchamp and James Childress, in their pivotal The Principles of Biomedical Ethics, achieved this neutrality through an approach that came to be known as "principlist bioethics." In Pastoral Aesthetics, Nathan Carlin critically engages Beauchamp and Childress by revisiting the role of religion in bioethics and argues that pastoral theologians can enrich moral imagination in bioethics by cultivating an aesthetic sensibility that is theologically-informed, psychologically-sophisticated, therapeutically-oriented, and experientially-grounded. To achieve these ends, Carlin employs Paul Tillich''s method of correlation by positioning four principles of bioethics with four images of pastoral care, drawing on a range of sources, including painting, fiction, memoir, poetry, journalism, cultural studies, clinical journals, classic cases in bioethics, and original pastoral care conversations. What emerges is a form of interdisciplinary inquiry that will be of special interest to bioethicists, theologians, and chaplains.

Teaching Health Humanities expands our understanding of the burgeoning field of health humanities and of what it aspires to be. The volume's contributors describe their different degree programs, the politics and perspectives that inform their teaching, and methods for incorporating newer digital and multimodal technologies into teaching practices. Each chapter lays out theories that guide contributors' pedagogy, describes its application to syllabus design, and includes, at the finer level, examples of lesson plans, class exercises, and/or textual analyses. Contributions also focus on pedagogies that integrate critical race, feminist, queer, disability, class, and age studies in courses, with most essays exemplifying intersectional approaches to these axes of difference and oppression. The culminating section includes chapters on teaching with digital technology, as well as descriptions of courses that bridge bioethics and music, medical humanities and podcasts, health humanities filmmaking, and visual arts in end-of-life care. By collecting scholars from a wide array of disciplinary specialties, professional ranks, and institutional affiliations, the volume offers a snapshot of the diverse ways medical/health humanities is practiced today and maps the diverse institutional locations where it is called upon to do work. It provides educators across diverse terrains myriad insights that will energize their teaching.

Teaching Health Humanities expands our understanding of the burgeoning field of health humanities and of what it aspires to be. The volume''s contributors describe their different degree programs, the politics and perspectives that inform their teaching, and methods for incorporating newer digital and multimodal technologies into teaching practices.Each chapter lays out theories that guide contributors'' pedagogy, describes its application to syllabus design, and includes, at the finer level, examples of lesson plans, class exercises, and/or textual analyses. Contributions also focus on pedagogies that integrate critical race, feminist, queer, disability, class, and age studies in courses, with most essays exemplifying intersectional approaches to these axes of difference and oppression. The culminating section includes chapters on teaching with digital technology, as well as descriptions of courses that bridge bioethics and music, medical humanities and podcasts, health humanities filmmaking, and visual arts in end-of-life care.By collecting scholars from a wide array of disciplinary specialties, professional ranks, and institutional affiliations, the volume offers a snapshot of the diverse ways medical/health humanities is practiced today and maps the diverse institutional locations where it is called upon to do work. It provides educators across diverse terrains myriad insights that will energize their teaching.

Teaching Health Humanities expands our understanding of the burgeoning field of health humanities and of what it aspires to be. The volume''s contributors describe their different degree programs, the politics and perspectives that inform their teaching, and methods for incorporating newer digital and multimodal technologies into teaching practices.Each chapter lays out theories that guide contributors'' pedagogy, describes its application to syllabus design, and includes, at the finer level, examples of lesson plans, class exercises, and/or textual analyses. Contributions also focus on pedagogies that integrate critical race, feminist, queer, disability, class, and age studies in courses, with most essays exemplifying intersectional approaches to these axes of difference and oppression. The culminating section includes chapters on teaching with digital technology, as well as descriptions of courses that bridge bioethics and music, medical humanities and podcasts, health humanities filmmaking, and visual arts in end-of-life care.By collecting scholars from a wide array of disciplinary specialties, professional ranks, and institutional affiliations, the volume offers a snapshot of the diverse ways medical/health humanities is practiced today and maps the diverse institutional locations where it is called upon to do work. It provides educators across diverse terrains myriad insights that will energize their teaching.

Why do doctors take the Hippocratic Oath? Is this like reciting a religious creed? Is the White Coat Ceremony a kind of medical ordination? These medical rituals do seem to offer grounding for moral life in the profession. People from all over the globe make pilgrimages to places like the Mayo Clinic and the Texas Medical Center in search of salvation--not of their souls, but of their bodies. Are cardiologists, oncologists, and other specialists the secular high priests of our time? Patients do sacrifice large sums of cash in exchange for hope. While it is true that medicine and religion once had overt connections that have since declined, The Secularization of Medicine argues that religion as a social force in medicine has not been extinguished. Instead, religious material or ideas have migrated to non-religious or secular spaces and have been absorbed by the surrounding culture. This is a process of transposition, seen most clearly in the religious names of many hospitals and medical research institutions, continuing the tradition of Christian missions that care for the sick and see education as part of their religious duties. In this book, Nathan Carlin identifies three new types of transposition--instrumental transpositions, idealized transpositions, and imaginative transpositions--and explores them in various domains of medicine that resemble or recall religious belief or practice. He discovers that medicine is not as secular as we might imagine it to be, and this has implications for the well-being of physicians.

Why do doctors take the Hippocratic Oath? Is this like reciting a religious creed? Is the White Coat Ceremony a kind of medical ordination? These medical rituals do seem to offer grounding for moral life in the profession. People from all over the globe make pilgrimages to places like the Mayo Clinic and the Texas Medical Center in search of salvation--not of their souls, but of their bodies. Are cardiologists, oncologists, and other specialists the secular high priests of our time? Patients do sacrifice large sums of cash in exchange for hope. While it is true that medicine and religion once had overt connections that have since declined, The Secularization of Medicine argues that religion as a social force in medicine has not been extinguished. Instead, religious material or ideas have migrated to non-religious or secular spaces and have been absorbed by the surrounding culture. This is a process of transposition, seen most clearly in the religious names of many hospitals and medical research institutions, continuing the tradition of Christian missions that care for the sick and see education as part of their religious duties. In this book, Nathan Carlin identifies three new types of transposition--instrumental transpositions, idealized transpositions, and imaginative transpositions--and explores them in various domains of medicine that resemble or recall religious belief or practice. He discovers that medicine is not as secular as we might imagine it to be, and this has implications for the well-being of physicians.

Why do doctors take the Hippocratic Oath? Is this like reciting a religious creed? Is the White Coat Ceremony a kind of medical ordination? These medical rituals do seem to offer grounding for moral life in the profession. People from all over the globe make pilgrimages to places like the Mayo Clinic and the Texas Medical Center in search of salvation--not of their souls, but of their bodies. Are cardiologists, oncologists, and other specialists the secular high priests of our time? Patients do sacrifice large sums of cash in exchange for hope. While it is true that medicine and religion once had overt connections that have since declined, The Secularization of Medicine argues that religion as a social force in medicine has not been extinguished. Instead, religious material or ideas have migrated to non-religious or secular spaces and have been absorbed by the surrounding culture. This is a process of transposition, seen most clearly in the religious names of many hospitals and medical research institutions, continuing the tradition of Christian missions that care for the sick and see education as part of their religious duties. In this book, Nathan Carlin identifies three new types of transposition--instrumental transpositions, idealized transpositions, and imaginative transpositions--and explores them in various domains of medicine that resemble or recall religious belief or practice. He discovers that medicine is not as secular as we might imagine it to be, and this has implications for the well-being of physicians.

A critical care doctor becomes one of the first physicians in the United States to contract COVID-19. A pediatrician reflects on her father's passing during her final year of medical school. A Muslim surgeon contemplates whether residency has replaced his faith. An orthopedic surgeon wonders, after a decade of training, if he made the right choices after the death of his brother-in-law. An African American resident painfully asks: Do Black lives truly matter to white coats? For decades, medical humanists have advocated for attending to patients as "whole persons." So, too, the time has come to see physicians as "whole persons." In this urgent, moving collection of essays, a diverse group of early-career physicians write about common experiences in medicine--such as the grueling nature of internship and residency--from a fresh, up-to-date perspective. With particular attention how to the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, and identity influence clinicians' experiences as caregivers, the featured practitioner-authors reflect on endurance, suffering, and the politics of wellness across their personal and professional lives, delicately capturing a new dimension of healthcare previously unfamiliar to wider audiences. Medicine, Meaning, and Identity invites readers to reconsider the doctor not as a hero, but rather as a complex, whole person; not merely as a healer, but as an integral community member in acute need of healing.

A critical care doctor becomes one of the first physicians in the United States to contract COVID-19. A pediatrician reflects on her father's passing during her final year of medical school. A Muslim surgeon contemplates whether residency has replaced his faith. An orthopedic surgeon wonders, after a decade of training, if he made the right choices after the death of his brother-in-law. An African American resident painfully asks: Do Black lives truly matter to white coats? For decades, medical humanists have advocated for attending to patients as "whole persons." So, too, the time has come to see physicians as "whole persons." In this urgent, moving collection of essays, a diverse group of early-career physicians write about common experiences in medicine--such as the grueling nature of internship and residency--from a fresh, up-to-date perspective. With particular attention how to the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, and identity influence clinicians' experiences as caregivers, the featured practitioner-authors reflect on endurance, suffering, and the politics of wellness across their personal and professional lives, delicately capturing a new dimension of healthcare previously unfamiliar to wider audiences. Medicine, Meaning, and Identity invites readers to reconsider the doctor not as a hero, but rather as a complex, whole person; not merely as a healer, but as an integral community member in acute need of healing.

A critical care doctor becomes one of the first physicians in the United States to contract COVID-19. A pediatrician reflects on her father's passing during her final year of medical school. A Muslim surgeon contemplates whether residency has replaced his faith. An orthopedic surgeon wonders, after a decade of training, if he made the right choices after the death of his brother-in-law. An African American resident painfully asks: Do Black lives truly matter to white coats? For decades, medical humanists have advocated for attending to patients as "e;whole persons."e; So, too, the time has come to see physicians as "e;whole persons."e; In this urgent, moving collection of essays, a diverse group of early-career physicians write about common experiences in medicine--such as the grueling nature of internship and residency--from a fresh, up-to-date perspective. With particular attention how to the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, and identity influence clinicians' experiences as caregivers, the featured practitioner-authors reflect on endurance, suffering, and the politics of wellness across their personal and professional lives, delicately capturing a new dimension of healthcare previously unfamiliar to wider audiences. Medicine, Meaning, and Identity invites readers to reconsider the doctor not as a hero, but rather as a complex, whole person; not merely as a healer, but as an integral community member in acute need of healing.

A critical care doctor becomes one of the first physicians in the United States to contract COVID-19. A pediatrician reflects on her father's passing during her final year of medical school. A Muslim surgeon contemplates whether residency has replaced his faith. An orthopedic surgeon wonders, after a decade of training, if he made the right choices after the death of his brother-in-law. An African American resident painfully asks: Do Black lives truly matter to white coats? For decades, medical humanists have advocated for attending to patients as "e;whole persons."e; So, too, the time has come to see physicians as "e;whole persons."e; In this urgent, moving collection of essays, a diverse group of early-career physicians write about common experiences in medicine--such as the grueling nature of internship and residency--from a fresh, up-to-date perspective. With particular attention how to the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, and identity influence clinicians' experiences as caregivers, the featured practitioner-authors reflect on endurance, suffering, and the politics of wellness across their personal and professional lives, delicately capturing a new dimension of healthcare previously unfamiliar to wider audiences. Medicine, Meaning, and Identity invites readers to reconsider the doctor not as a hero, but rather as a complex, whole person; not merely as a healer, but as an integral community member in acute need of healing.

This book examines the phenomenon of physician-authors. Focusing on the books that contemporary doctors write--the stories that they tell--with contributors critically engaging their work. A selection of original chapters from leading scholars in medical and health humanities analyze the literary output of doctors, including Oliver Sacks, Danielle Ofri, Atul Gawande, Louise Aronson, Siddhartha Mukherjee, and Abraham Verghese. Discussing issues of moral meaning in the works of contemporary doctor-writers, from memoir to poetry, this collection reflects some of the diversity of medicine today. A key reference for all students and scholars of medical and health humanities, the book will be especially useful for those interested in the relationship between literature and practising medicine.

Today, diversity of gender and sexuality is beginning to be recognized and celebrated, even while many religious denominations still resist these cultural changes. The Gift of Sublimation offers pastoral interpretations of these social shifts in the light of psychological principles, and argues that there is, historically, not only one view of masculinity but multiple conceptions. This discussion covers topics as diverse as the moral disapproval of masturbation; the efforts of some churches to convince homosexual men to adopt a heterosexual orientation; the dynamics of male envy of female longevity; the homosexual tendencies of King James I of England and VI of Scotland; and biblical portraits of God's body, gender, and sexuality. Nathan Carlin and Donald Capps make special use of the psychoanalytic concept of sublimation: the redirection of sexual desires that are considered unacceptable or unworthy towards interests and aspirations that are considered acceptable and worthy. While the use of psychoanalytic hermeneutics here is likely to raise various red flags for potential religious readers, especially for those who have been informed that Sigmund Freud was hostile towards religion, this book presents a rather different view, focussing on religious sublimation.

This Element is a survey of the field of pathographies of mental illness. It explores classic texts in the field as well as other selected contemporary memoirs. In doing so, the reader is introduced to psychiatric information about various mental illnesses through a narrative lens, emphasizing experience. Because clinical research is evidenced-based and aims to produce generalizable knowledge (i.e., trends), the reading of pathographies can complement these findings with practical experiential insights. By pairing psychiatric information with pathographies, certain personal themes become apparent that are different from the empirical trends identified by scientific and medical researchers. Based on the survey presented here, this Element identifies seven such themes, laying the foundation for future research, inquiry, practice, and policy.

This Element is a survey of the field of pathographies of mental illness. It explores classic texts in the field as well as other selected contemporary memoirs. In doing so, the reader is introduced to psychiatric information about various mental illnesses through a narrative lens, emphasizing experience. Because clinical research is evidenced-based and aims to produce generalizable knowledge (i.e., trends), the reading of pathographies can complement these findings with practical experiential insights. By pairing psychiatric information with pathographies, certain personal themes become apparent that are different from the empirical trends identified by scientific and medical researchers. Based on the survey presented here, this Element identifies seven such themes, laying the foundation for future research, inquiry, practice, and policy.

This Element is a survey of the field of pathographies of mental illness. It explores classic texts in the field as well as other selected contemporary memoirs. In doing so, the reader is introduced to psychiatric information about various mental illnesses through a narrative lens, emphasizing experience. Because clinical research is evidenced-based and aims to produce generalizable knowledge (i.e., trends), the reading of pathographies can complement these findings with practical experiential insights. By pairing psychiatric information with pathographies, certain personal themes become apparent that are different from the empirical trends identified by scientific and medical researchers. Based on the survey presented here, this Element identifies seven such themes, laying the foundation for future research, inquiry, practice, and policy.

This book examines the phenomenon of physician-authors. Focusing on the books that contemporary doctors write--the stories that they tell--with contributors critically engaging their work. A selection of original chapters from leading scholars in medical and health humanities analyze the literary output of doctors, including Oliver Sacks, Danielle Ofri, Atul Gawande, Louise Aronson, Siddhartha Mukherjee, and Abraham Verghese. Discussing issues of moral meaning in the works of contemporary doctor-writers, from memoir to poetry, this collection reflects some of the diversity of medicine today. A key reference for all students and scholars of medical and health humanities, the book will be especially useful for those interested in the relationship between literature and practising medicine.

There is not, and never was, a monolithic masculinity; there are, and always have been, multiple masculinities. Today diversity with regard to gender and sexuality is beginning to be recognized and celebrated even while many religious denominations still resist these cultural changes. This book offers pastoral interpretations of these social shifts in light of psychological principles, applying them to topics such as the moral disapproval of masturbation; the efforts of some churches to convince homosexual men to adopt a heterosexual orientation; the dynamics of male envy of female longevity; the homosexual tendencies of King James of England and Scotland; and biblical portraits of God''s body, gender, and sexuality.The authors make a special use of the psychoanalytic concept of sublimation--that is, the redirection of sexual desires that are considered unacceptable or unworthy toward interests and aspirations that are considered acceptable and worthy. While the use of psychoanalytic hermeneutics here is likely to raise various red flags for potential religious readers (especially for those who have been informed that Sigmund Freud was hostile toward religion), this book presents a rather different Freud by focusing on religious sublimation.

Limbo has traditionally been viewed as a place between heaven, on the one hand, and purgatory and hell, on the other, to which the patriarchs, who lived under the old law, and babies who died before being baptized into the Christian faith have been consigned. Like purgatory, it is a dark place but not deprived of grace. Now that the Roman Catholic Church has declared that limbo is not an official church teaching, the idea of limbo has been freed from ecclesiastical constraints and available for reflection on the human condition on this side of the grave.Living in Limbo by Donald Capps and Nathan Carlin focuses on the acute limbo situations that are an integral part of human life, including the vicissitudes of growing up, of forming committed relationships, of finding employment and staying employed, of undergoing life-threatening illnesses, and of experiencing dislocation and doubt. Using cases and examples of real-life persons, the book identifies the forms of distress likely to occur throughout the duration of the limbo experience, and it also identifies the internal and external resources that individuals draw upon as they cope with the stresses and uncertainties of living in limbo.Drawing on the traditional view, especially reflected in Christian art, that Christ descends into limbo to comfort and liberate its occupants, Living in Limbo comes down on the side of hope versus despair. In reading about other limbo dwellers, readers will meet themselves-or someone they love and care about-and will be encouraged by the very fact that they are not alone. Although it is not a pleasant place to be, limbo is not a place of solitary confinement, and one derives strength and resilience from the presence of the others.

Religious Mourning is about a common experience among those who study religion: religious loss. When people of faith study religion critically, or when life experiences such as death and divorce trigger personal reflection on faith, religious intellectuals often become estranged from their own tradition. Sometimes this estrangement causes them to leave religion altogether. But for those who study religion from a psychological perspective, a certain kind of introspective and iconoclastic religiosity can be revived by means of academic writing. Religious Mourning explores this phenomenon by focusing on psychobiographical writings about religious leaders--including Donald Capps'' portrait of Jesus of Nazareth, James Dittes'' portrait of Saint Augustine, and William Bouwsma''s portrait of John Calvin--to show how these authors'' personal lives, and especially their experiences of loss, influence their scholarship. As Capps, Dittes, and Bouwsma subversively scavenge the lives of Jesus, Augustine, and Calvin to reverse and restore a religion that is rich with experience, including (and especially) their own, they invite us to do the same.