Asthma and dualism

The rejection of Cartesian dualism can be taken to imply that the mind is i mplicated in health and illness to a greater degree than conventional medic ine would suggest. Surprisingly, however, there appears to be a train of th ought in antidualist nursing theory which takes the opposite view. This pap er looks closely at an interesting example of antidualist thinking - an art icle in which Benner and her colleagues comment on the ways in which people with asthma make sense of their condition - and concludes that it places u nduly stringent and arbitrary limits on the mind's role. It then asks how a ntidualism can lead to such a dogmatic rejection of the idea that states of the body are clinically influenced by states of mind. The answer to this q uestion is that Benner assimilates very different philosophical theories in to the same 'tradition'. On this occasion, she has combined Descartes, Kant and the Platonist ascetics into a single package, misleadingly labelled 'C artesianism', and this move accounts for her unexpected views on the relati on between mind and body in asthma.