Tobie Nathan (Author)
Stengers, Isabelle (Author)
Polity Press
Publication date: 2018
Language: English
Physical Details: 220 pages
We think we know what healers do: they build on patients' irrational beliefs and treat them in a 'symbolic' way. If they get results, it's thanks to their capacity to listen, rather than any influence on a clinical level. At the same time, we also think we know what modern medicine is: a highly technical and rational process, but one that scarcely listens to patients at all. In this book, ethnopsychiatrist Tobie Nathan and philosopher Isabelle Stengers argue that this commonly posed opposition between traditional and modern medicine is misleading. They show instead that healers are interesting precisely because they don't listen to patients, using techniques of 'divination' rather than 'diagnosis'. Healers construct genuine therapeutic strategies by identifying the origins of symptoms in external forces, outside of the mind of the sufferer, and in this regard African healers are virtuosos. Though it may claim otherwise, modern medicine, for its part, is characterised by empiricism rather than rationality. What appears to be the pursuit of rationality is ultimately only a means to dismiss and exclude other forms of treatment. Blurring the distinctions between traditional and modern practices and drawing on perspectives from across the globe, this ethnopsychiatric manifesto encourages us to think in radically new ways about illness, challenging accepted notions on the relationship between sufferer and symptom. It will be of great interest to those working in medicine and healthcare, as well as anthropologists, social scientists and those in the humanities more broadly.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Chapter
Fabrizio Bigotti;
(2023)
Fluid metaphors. Bodily Fluids and the Emergence of Quantification in Pre-Modern Medicine
(/p/isis/citation/CBB770827169/)
Book
Fabiola Zurlini;
Andrea Vesprini;
Pietro Scendoni;
(2023)
Storiografia Medica in Europa nel Novecento. Dalla Medicina di Precisione alla visione olistica
(/p/isis/citation/CBB667654848/)
Book
John S. Haller;
(2014)
Shadow Medicine: The Placebo in Conventional and Alternative Therapies
(/p/isis/citation/CBB471011619/)
Chapter
Isabelle Coquillard;
(2023)
The Docteurs Régents of the Paris Faculty of Medicine during the 18th Century. Uniting for the Faculty and being part of a Professional Group
(/p/isis/citation/CBB370626060/)
Chapter
Esther Diana;
(2023)
Il Medico Architetto: una nuova professionalità per la modernizzazione dell'ospedale Ottocentesco. Il caso fiorentino
(/p/isis/citation/CBB513332360/)
Chapter
Andrea Cozza;
(2023)
La nascita della attuale medicina cardiovascolare nella Belle Époque
(/p/isis/citation/CBB479954057/)
Chapter
Domenico Roccolo;
(2023)
Confraternite e malati a Roma nell'età moderna
(/p/isis/citation/CBB551431790/)
Chapter
Mauro Melato;
(2023)
Loris Premuda, un triestino professore a Padova
(/p/isis/citation/CBB131590870/)
Chapter
Heinz Schott;
(2023)
Medical History Regarding Medical Humanities. New perspectives on education and research
(/p/isis/citation/CBB535809747/)
Chapter
Vera Nigrisoli Wärnhjelm;
Fabiola Zurlini;
(2023)
Il caso della storiografia medica sulla Regina Cristina di Svezia: ricostruzione storica e prospettiva per nuove fonti di ricerca
(/p/isis/citation/CBB707629054/)
Chapter
Riccardo Gattai;
Stefania Lotti;
Laura Faustini;
(2023)
Adelfo Masotti. A Pioneer of Diathermy-surgery and the Private Hospital
(/p/isis/citation/CBB310386856/)
Chapter
Franco Rostano;
(2023)
Edouard Rostan, medico valdese dell’Ottocento
(/p/isis/citation/CBB318062784/)
Chapter
Vivian Nutton;
(2023)
History of medicine in the Twentieth century: complementary or competing approaches?
(/p/isis/citation/CBB702740141/)
Chapter
Walter Grassi;
(2023)
La gotta: malattia dei re e regina delle malattie
(/p/isis/citation/CBB961934235/)
Book
Philipp Osten;
(2015)
Das Tor zur Seele: Schlaf, Somnambulismus und Hellsehen im frühen 19. Jahrhundert
(/p/isis/citation/CBB527777270/)
Article
Marian Surdacki;
(2023)
Physicians and Surgeons at the Hospital of the Holy Spirit in Rome in the 17th-18th Centuries
(/p/isis/citation/CBB437109368/)
Chapter
D. C. Angetter;
B. Hubmann;
J. Seidl;
(2013)
Physicians and Their Contribution to the Early History of Earth Sciences in Austria
(/p/isis/citation/CBB776812841/)
Article
Wen-yuan Lin;
John Law;
(2022)
Thinking differently with Chinese medicine: ‘Explanations’ and case studies for a postcolonial STS
(/p/isis/citation/CBB161338816/)
Article
Alan Mackintosh;
(2016)
The Patent Medicines Industry in Late Georgian England: A Respectable Alternative to both Regular Medicine and Irregular Practice
(/p/isis/citation/CBB566583777/)
Article
Frederic Le Blay;
(2017)
La controverse de Galien contre Asclépiade et les Méthodiques: défendre l'utilité du médecin
(/p/isis/citation/CBB892048259/)
Be the first to comment!