Postmodernist Medicine
Postmodernist Medicine
This chapter examines the rise of postmodernism in the second half of the twentieth century and the epistemological challenges it forced upon the core values of scientific positivism. Postmodernism viewed objectivity as an illusion, a set of images or metanarratives that fragmented both reason and meaning. Applied to medicine, it questioned the “truth” of the physician's reductionist account of illness, including those conclusions drawn from evidence-based medicine (EBM). It also revolted against patient objectification, inferring that the “truth” of an illness is no longer in the physician's objectivist and biomedical account, but in the patient's narrative. This resulted in the rise of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), a more intuitive and individualized approach to medicine. This new representation of illness involves social, psychological, and cultural components; innovative new discourses on pain, suffering, and empathy; and perceived limitations of the dominant biochemical model.
Keywords: postmodernism, objectivity, medicine, evidence-based medicine, patient objectification, complementary and alternative medicine
Columbia Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
