ABSTRACT
Both clinical psychology and the medical humanities define care in a way that transcends its curative ends. Each field acknowledges that patients should be considered in their ethical, social, and personal entirety, rather than from the one-dimensional vantage point of their symptoms and health deficits. In defining care, subjective, intersubjective, and embodied dynamics need to be considered, as these factors are central to its quality, efficacy, and enduring impact. Kinesic intelligence helps highlight these powerful and understudied dynamics which are often unacknowledged in traditional scientific approaches. This chapter aims to show how clinical psychology, as a practice and approach to research, can shed light on some of the underpinnings of kinesic intelligence. The results of a qualitative, inductive, and participative study, whose participants are adolescents and young adults with cancer and their caregivers, are presented. The study foregrounds the complex, multimodal interactions elicited by this form of care, revealing its importance for physical and psychological recovery. A better understanding of kinesic intelligence in clinical psychology and the medical humanities is instrumental to a type of care that addresses patients’ therapeutic needs by being complementary to the biotechnical approach of contemporary medicine.
