saintadatha

Illness is more than this presocial actuality; it is not, in the words of Phil Brown a given biomedical fact but a set of understandings that are inconstant and socially constructed (1995:37). Thus, when the patient enters into the biomedical system - either through personal choice or in response to the social compulsion to adopt and accept the sick role, if categorized as necessary - it is via the human interface of the biomedical clinician within the context of the clinical reality. The negotiation that this interaction necessitates involves the submission of the patient to the authority of the human face of biomedical knowledge. Thereafter, his psychobiological problem, already clothed in the reality of personal experience, will be stripped and objectified by both participants alike in accordance with the rules of the clinical grounds on which they interact. The gained data will then be classified and appropriate responses will be considered within the positivistic system of biomedicine. So it is that, within the singular social interaction between doctor and patient, at even the most basic level, there occurs not one but several negotiations, between not two, but numerous realities.

So there.