Abstract
The call for a narrative medicine has been touted as the cure-all for an increasingly mechanical medicine. It has been claimed that the humanities might create more empathic, reflective, professional and trustworthy doctors. In other words, we can once again humanise medicine through the addition of humanities. In this essay, I explore how the humanities, particularly narrative medicine, appeals to the metaphysical commitments of the medical institution in order to find its justification, and in so doing, perpetuates a dualism of humanity that would have humanism as the counterpoint to the biopsychosociologisms of our day.
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I mean discipline in the Foucauldian sense, as in those who discipline.
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See A. Bleakley, R. Marshall, and R. Bromer, “Toward an Aesthetic Medicine: Developing a Core Medical Humanities Curriculum,” Journal of Medical Humanities 27 (4): 197–213 as a counterpoint to this dose mentality.
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Ibid, p. 1900.
Ibid, p. 1901.
Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” p. 251.
Charon, “Narrative Medicine: A Model for Empathy,” p. 1897.
Ibid, p. 1897.
Ibid, p. 1898.
Ibid, p. 1898.
Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” p. 218.
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Ibid, p. 229.
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Churchland.
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Ibid, p. 1898.
I am referring to Bacon’s famous saying that the benefit of humankind is the purpose and round of all science.
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As translated and quoted by J Faubian in the general introduction to Foucault’s Death and the Labyrinth. (London: Continuum, 2004). Bottom of page xix, footnote.
Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” pp. 228–229.
JP Bishop and F Jotterand, “Bioethics as Biopolitics,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 31 (3): 202–212.
See Foucault, Birth of the Clinic and M. Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Random House, 1970).
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Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” p. 222.
Ibid, p. 217.
G Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. P Patton (London: Continuum, 1994).
Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” p. 217.
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Bishop, J.P. Rejecting Medical Humanism: Medical Humanities and the Metaphysics of Medicine. J Med Humanit 29, 15–25 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-007-9048-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-007-9048-7