Espiritualidade e saúde: polissemia, fragilidades e riscos do conceito

• Autor(a) principal: Leite, Ana Luísa Prosperi
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Stern, Fabio L., Guerriero, Silas
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Horizonte - Revista de Estudos de Teologia e Ciências da Religião
• Texto Completo: http://periodicos.pucminas.br/index.php/horizonte/article/view/26989
• topic: Religion and health; Definition of spirituality; Definition of religion; Religião e saúde; Definição de espiritualidade; Definição de religião; Espiritualidade e saúde

This article aims to understand how the term "spirituality" has been used in the health area, discussing the problems and the possible adversities of its polysemy. To this end, we divide this study into three parts. In the first part, we present the different definitions of "spirituality" in the human sciences, its historical relationship with the Christian theology, and its recent re-signification by the New Age. Next, we demonstrate how most of the productions in the health area adopt a reified and essentialized conception of spirituality. In the third section, we discuss the main weaknesses identified in the study. The term spirituality is being used in the medical sciences to allow religion to enter its spaces, including public policies, although secularized. We draw a parallel with the phenomenology of religion to demonstrate the consequences of a misconceived category in the long run. Finally, we identified an overvaluation of the psychological dimension of spirituality to the detriment of the moral and ritual dimensions.