
Doctors and Healers
Polity Press
1st Edition
Published on 6. July 2018
Book
Paperback/Softback
220 pages
978-1-5095-2186-9 (ISBN)
Description
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. Modern medicine, for its part, is characterized 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.
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. Modern medicine, for its part, is characterized 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.
Reviews / Votes
"The translation of this collaboration between two leading European thinkers about psychopathology and therapeutic process gives us access to a challenging way of thinking about the relation between health and the holy, medicine and the sacred, science and religion, rationality and irrationality, psychotherapy and psychopharmacology - all in a way that will be of immediate value for those concerned with psychiatric anthropology, cultural psychiatry and global mental health."-Thomas Csordas, University of California San Diego
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Publishing group
John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 136 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
278 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5095-2186-9 (9781509521869)
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Tobie Nathan | Isabelle Stengers
Doctors and Healers
E-Book
08/2018
1st Edition
Wiley
€16.99
Available for download

Tobie Nathan | Isabelle Stengers
Doctors and Healers
E-Book
08/2018
1st Edition
Wiley-Scrivener
€16.99
Available for download

Tobie Nathan | Isabelle Stengers
Doctors and Healers
Book
07/2018
1st Edition
Polity Press
€60.50
Shipment within 15-20 days
Persons
Tobie Nathan is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the Universite Paris-VIII.
Isabelle Stengers is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
Isabelle Stengers is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
Content
Editor's Note
1. Towards a Scientific Psychopathology
Tobie Nathan
I. The Benefits of Folk Therapy
Scientific Therapy and Folk Therapy
Solitude
Diagnostics or Divination
Statistical Categories vs. Real Cultural Groups
The Construction of Truth
Risky Psychopathology
A Clinical Illustration
Continuation of the Consultation
II. Medicines in Non-Western Cultures
Prolegomena on Thought and Belief
The Idea of the Symbol
The White Man's Medicines
Thought is in Objects
Concepts of the Savage Mind
Active Objects
In Conclusion
2. The Doctor and the Charlatan
Isabelle Stengers
Recovering for the Wrong Reasons
The Power of Experimentation
Who defines the causes?
A Practical Challenge
3. Users: Lobbies or Political Creativity?
Isabelle Stengers
Is another kind of medicine possible?
Disease mongering
A machine
Condemnation?
Hands Off!
4. Doctors, Healers, Therapists, the Sick, Patients, Subjects, Users
Tobie Nathan
Therapist
The Sick
Patients
Subjects
Users
Pharmaka
Notes
1. Towards a Scientific Psychopathology
Tobie Nathan
I. The Benefits of Folk Therapy
Scientific Therapy and Folk Therapy
Solitude
Diagnostics or Divination
Statistical Categories vs. Real Cultural Groups
The Construction of Truth
Risky Psychopathology
A Clinical Illustration
Continuation of the Consultation
II. Medicines in Non-Western Cultures
Prolegomena on Thought and Belief
The Idea of the Symbol
The White Man's Medicines
Thought is in Objects
Concepts of the Savage Mind
Active Objects
In Conclusion
2. The Doctor and the Charlatan
Isabelle Stengers
Recovering for the Wrong Reasons
The Power of Experimentation
Who defines the causes?
A Practical Challenge
3. Users: Lobbies or Political Creativity?
Isabelle Stengers
Is another kind of medicine possible?
Disease mongering
A machine
Condemnation?
Hands Off!
4. Doctors, Healers, Therapists, the Sick, Patients, Subjects, Users
Tobie Nathan
Therapist
The Sick
Patients
Subjects
Users
Pharmaka
Notes