세계 내에서 관계하는 몸으로 바라본 위약효과

Abstract

Placebo effects are intriguing phenomena in which beneficial healing effects happen despite the administration of a placebo, which has no active substances or involves inert procedures. Multi-dimensional characteristics have been involved in placebo effects, exhibiting various and non-specific modalities. The two most representative well-known explanatory models on placebo effects, expectancy and conditioning theories, which have perspectives rooted in Cartesian dualism that separate mind and body, show inherent limitations and problems in sufficiently explaining placebo effects. In order to elucidate placebo effects which shows non-separative, connective and relating aspects, new models capable of embracing and explaining such aspects are required. This study attempted to examine how placebo effects could happen in our bodies by means of studies based upon phenomenology and enactivism as models to account for the connective, combining, and interactive relations between various dimensions. This study elucidates the mechanisms of placebo effects using the phenomenological and various enactive concepts. At the heart of connections and relations between several heterogenous dimensions, relating bodies as embodied beings are closely involved in the dynamic interactions with our mind and environments. Our bodies where health, illness, and healing processes through medical practices including placebo effects take place could be considered as the very relation itself in which our internal and external worlds encounter and interact. This study suggests that continual establishment and verification of new theories concerning these relations, which are manifested in placebo effect, are required to deal persuasively with the topic, and the need for appropriate utilization of the relational aspects of placebo effects.