Foucault's 'medical gaze'.

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Lucylu
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Foucault's 'medical gaze'.

Post by Lucylu »

Hello all

I have an essay coming up at uni which is all about person-centred care in medicine and health professions. I wanted to ask in particular about Foucault's 'medical gaze' and whether there was an explicit or implied response to this in philosophical literature or journals.

I know that Derrida thought that there was not necessarily anything wrong with an imbalance of power in a relationship, for instance between a parent and child or between an expert and a layman but do you know of any other responses? If there's anything else that comes to mind, I would really appreciate some input.

For those not familiar with the medical gaze, it was something Foucault talked about in The Birth of the Clinic. It was the objectification of people by doctors, seeing them as merely body parts and pathologies, and the dehumanizing effect this had.

I would like to be able to talk fluently about paternalistic society and back this up with examples but also balance this with the idea that some power is valuable and necessary to society. What are the tensions? The pros and cons, etc.



Many thanks

Lucy
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts". -Bertrand Russell
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Burning ghost
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Re: Foucault's 'medical gaze'.

Post by Burning ghost »

To be fair to ... Foucault doesn't really say much that hadn't already been suggested.

Foucault mostly wrote fiction based loosely around the structure of some facts. Think of him more as a lazy scholar than as an historical source.

Simply put, I am growing more and more in the opinion, with many others, that Foucault is simply vacuous and purposely obtuse. I would say the same for Derrida, but apparently he was at least trying to push something unique to the French language regarding its general history ... but again, Derrida is purposefully obscure too.

Both of them want to confuse.

-- Updated October 16th, 2017, 10:22 pm to add the following --

I should probably not be so dismissive here?

I guess what strikes me about both Derrida and Foucault is their ability to take something said before and dress it up as their own particular idea. What they are tending to do is explore the purpose, intent and application of language, rather than specific articles of discussion. A lot of this use of hermeneutics seems to stem from Heidegger's ideas, which were (in my opinion) taken out of context by both Derrida and Foucault, and Heidegger somewhat 'warped' Husserl's work into something partly obscure.

If I were you I would focus more on the differences in practice regarding psychology and physiology. Try looking at the crossover between psychoanalysis and psychiatry. The psychiatrist is more prone to view the patient as a "body" than a person, because they are tilted more toward the problem as a purely physiological one, whereas the psychoanalyst would be more inclined to view the patient as a person and prescribe changes in lifestyle, and life experience, rather than prescribing pharmaceuticals.

In view of my brief encounters with Foucault and Derrida I would say they both attempt to patch up the gap between the whole mind-body dilemma, and both do little more than exacerbate the problem by making further incoherent (and fuzzy) delineations.

All said and done I do admire the attempts Derrida and Foucault made, but at the same time I really think they were trying to force language (as in this kind of spoken language here) into a realm it simply isn't capable of dealing with.

-- Updated October 16th, 2017, 10:33 pm to add the following --

To add an appropriate quote I just happened to be reading ...
A crippling handicap of neuroscience today is the confused, ambiguous state of nomenclature used to describe the brain structure, much of which is unavoidably based on historical accident rather than contemporary knowledge.

- L.W. Swanson, "Cerebral hemisphere regular of motivated behvaiour" (2000)
Both Derrida and Foucault, in the wake of Heidegger, do little to contain any sense of "meaning" and merely wish to overturn any idea of universality. This is a particularly dangerous affair when it clashes with how we proceed with scientific investigation. To regard data as purely open to interpretation is to allow literally anyone to have any justification they wish to conjure up from their imagination.
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Lucylu
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Re: Foucault's 'medical gaze'.

Post by Lucylu »

Thank you for your thoughtful reply.
Burning ghost wrote:To be fair to ... Foucault doesn't really say much that hadn't already been suggested.
Really? Thats interesting. I read somewhere that he is the most quoted philosopher in recent times and is gaining in popularity, although I cant remember where I read that!
Burning ghost wrote:A lot of this use of hermeneutics seems to stem from Heidegger's ideas, which were (in my opinion) taken out of context by both Derrida and Foucault, and Heidegger somewhat 'warped' Husserl's work into something partly obscure.
Can you elaborate on this for me?
Burning ghost wrote:Both Derrida and Foucault, in the wake of Heidegger, do little to contain any sense of "meaning" and merely wish to overturn any idea of universality. This is a particularly dangerous affair when it clashes with how we proceed with scientific investigation. To regard data as purely open to interpretation is to allow literally anyone to have any justification they wish to conjure up from their imagination.
Yes thats an interesting point- the subjective is all well and good when we want to consider our own lives but when getting on with the real work of managing the health of a nation its just not very practical and is actually harmful. We can seek to treat every patient as a unique snowflake but when it comes down to it, words by their very nature are value laden and meant to categorize and we need to make judgements in order to communicate and help the person. For example, do you think the biomedical model of 'two legs good, one leg bad' is ok or should we embrace the idea of a sliding scale with everyone at different points on a spectrum?
Burning ghost wrote:Try looking at the crossover between psychoanalysis and psychiatry.
Yes that's a very good example as it shows the distinction between the two most clearly.

The literature on the reading list seems to love Foucault. Do you know of any clear noted discussions of health and a good life to point me in the right direction for further research? Aristotle spoke of eudaemonia which I understand to be 'the good life', something akin to Maslow's self-actualization. I think this was probably the first model of health.

The World Health Organisation has a pretty utopian definition of health as 'a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity'. By that definition no one on the planet is healthy, and we could all be said to be on a continuum of ill health.
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts". -Bertrand Russell
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Burning ghost
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Re: Foucault's 'medical gaze'.

Post by Burning ghost »

Maybe he is quoted a lot and also popular. I don't really regard such things as being of much value though. That said, I do believe the whole postmodern movement had some good in it; I would say mostly as a means for political reform (and not necessarily in a 'good' way.)

I could elaborate and I'd really like to. It would take some serious work on my part to deal with it in depth though, and I just don't have it at the top of my list (still waiting to read more Husserl, tackle Heidegger again, and then explore more of Derrida (not looking forward to the latter!) I will look for an appropriate piece by Husserl that may at least broadly highlight what he was about in regards to the science of psychology - probably a bit too far removed from what you wish to look at but may be worth a quick mention in regards to the history of the whole phenomenological development from Husserl right up to Derrida.

In regards to viewing patients, I do remember hearing about certain online systems where people could keep a very detailed record of themselves. I believe SOME doctors began to use the database, but hospitals veered away from them because there was no professional screening involved. I think the online site was VERY useful for some conditions, but there was obvious worry about pharmaceutical companies feeding false data into the unregulated system.

The economic factor is extremely important and should be taken into consideration too. Think about the pressure on doctors and the whole theme of competition within the medical "industry".

I remember hearing about how fatalities were dramatically decreased in surgery when surgeons implemented a list of check prior to surgery, inspired by airline pilot checks. See here : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19144931
The literature on the reading list seems to love Foucault.
Everyone has their biases. I would say he tries to make a new kind of scholarship in which he entertains the reader. Personally I think doing such a thing is completely idiotic. I scholar should present the details and fact as best they can without flowery language and with as little of their personal views expressed as possible (although inevitably some will seep in unintentionally.) If you compare his style of writing to Mircea Eliade or Francis Yates, you'll notice he has a style. Scholars search for and record information. That is what a good scholar is and quite clearly is exactly what Foucault is not.

Interesting as he is Foucault is neither a true scholar, a true historian nor a true philosopher. All he does is merely flit from one stand point to another to suit his own views. As a n artist of rhetoric he is good. There is undoubtedly a degree of fiction in his writing though. He is probably popular because he gives the reader a sense of knowledge (a sense of knowledge he himself has created, it is not really a clear and precise scholarly work, it is a more or less his own personal footnote cast on the pages of real scholars and presented as if it is a true scholarly work.) All that said he is most certainly an easy stepping stone that hopefully encourages students to delve into the works of better scholars (of which there are many.)

Anyway, I am rambling!

Any suggestion I would make would be of little help. I am not very familiar with the whole field of medical history. My inclination is toward psychology and neurosciences.

If I would suggest anything maybe it would be worth looking into drug rehabilitation and/or emotional support provided to people diagnosed with nasty diseases?

Apart from that common sense tells me that it is very important for a doctor to view the physical part of a patient as separate form the individual. People specialize in fields of study in order to help people and understand the human body better. Each specialist relies on the ability of other specialists and they understand to trust each other because their own field of knowledge is purposefully limited. Today there seem to be more and more cross disciplines involved in all manner of investigative fields, but at the end of the day if there is not one bloke out there dedicating his life to studying snails, or some woman dedicated to classification of new species of beetles, then our knowledge and understanding would be that less richer.

I guess this is the practical problem of individual diagnosis. There is not a singular professional that can offer a really good overview of a patient in every aspect of their health. The diagnosticians have an incredibly hard job and practically speaking they have to take into account a multitude of factors in order to refer the patient to the correct person. Herein lies the problem because the further down the line the patient is referred the further they are embedded in a particular field of vision. The diagnosticians have by far (imo) the hardest job of all. You refer a patient to a heart specialist, because the think the problem is with their heart, and the specialist will automatically assume that the problem is with the heart and focus their attention there instead of assuming the diagnostician has gotten it wrong.

The "dehumanizing" may be a problem. The aim of the medical institution is to get the patient the treatment they need as quickly and as efficiently as possible, not hold their hand and wipe away their tears. To do so would most likely result in the doctors being distracted and becoming less efficient. That said I do feel there need to be more help in post treatment therapy and the persons feeling of well being after they are on the road to recovery. From what I have heard there seems to be very little help offered for women who suffer from miscarriages (in this sense there is an inclination of the physiologist to only deal with the present physical condition rather than the patient as a human being - but that is not their specialization and we shouldn't expect it to be!)

Paternalistic society ... I would simply say read Jung. You can easily extend what I mention above into the broader sense of being a human being within society today. We all have a certain degree of independence, interdependence, power of knowledge, and supplication to the knowledge of others. Just because our knowledge of the world is constantly under scrutiny does not mean knowledge is a completely relative thing. Newton's ideas still work today and are put to use in everyday life. Practically speaking we don't need an understanding of Einstein's ideas to create an aerodynamic car. Meaning, just because better/different views and perspectives come along it does not make everything before it a complete and utter useless fantasy as people like Foucault and Derrida may like you to believe.

I imagine people like Foucault are popular because people like Graham Hancock are popular. They may say one thing of actual use, but that does not distract me from the over all nonsense of what is being said. Hopefully they will embolden more thorough investigation rather than derail it.

The more "softer" sciences, and humanities in general, are always prone to attack.

-- Updated October 18th, 2017, 12:29 am to add the following --

Hope SOME of that is vaguely useful! Got a bit carried away there! haha!
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Re: Foucault's 'medical gaze'.

Post by LuckyR »

Lucylu wrote:Hello all

I have an essay coming up at uni which is all about person-centred care in medicine and health professions. I wanted to ask in particular about Foucault's 'medical gaze' and whether there was an explicit or implied response to this in philosophical literature or journals.

I know that Derrida thought that there was not necessarily anything wrong with an imbalance of power in a relationship, for instance between a parent and child or between an expert and a layman but do you know of any other responses? If there's anything else that comes to mind, I would really appreciate some input.

For those not familiar with the medical gaze, it was something Foucault talked about in The Birth of the Clinic. It was the objectification of people by doctors, seeing them as merely body parts and pathologies, and the dehumanizing effect this had.

I would like to be able to talk fluently about paternalistic society and back this up with examples but also balance this with the idea that some power is valuable and necessary to society. What are the tensions? The pros and cons, etc.



Many thanks

Lucy
I am not conversant with the philosophical literature but if you are interested in the practical value of what you are describing, ask away.
"As usual... it depends."
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