1st Edition
A Phenomenology of Functional Neurological Disorder Body, Self, World
Biography
Kevin Aho is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Communication and Philosophy at Florida Gulf Coast University, USA. He has published widely in the areas of existentialism, applied hermeneutics and phenomenology, and phenomenological psychopathology. He is the author of One Beat More: Existentialism and the Gift of Mortality (2022), Existentialism: An Introduction (2014; 2nd ed. 2020), Contexts of Suffering: A Heideggerian Approach to Psychopathology (2019), Heidegger’s Neglect of the Body (2009), and Body Matters: A Phenomenology of Sickness, Illness, and Disease, with James Aho (2008). He is also editor of Existential Medicine: Essays on Health and Illness (2018) and co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Existentialism (2024).
“Aho gives voice to the suffering endured by patients diagnosed with FND, an uncanny medical condition with unknown causes situated at the border between neurology and psychiatry. He tracks the history of a diagnosis marked by shame and stigma which profoundly affects the possibilities of sharing and belonging to the world of others. Uniquely positioned as a leading scholar in the field of philosophy of medicine, Aho manages to combine his personal experiences with a phenomenological analysis of the specific symptoms and the changed identity they give rise to. He very convincingly argues that contemporary medicine needs to abandon neurocentrism and opt for a more radical empathy in the care of patients with medically unexplained disorders.”
Fredrik Svenaeus, Södertörn University, Sweden






