Talk:Medical gaze

DO
sources sorely needed!

i suggest an inclusion of the philosophy of osteopathic medicine and how it fits into to this topic by someone that understands osteopathic medicine well enough - i just know that their purpose is to treat the patient as an individual rather than treat the symptoms. Amirman 01:41, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Although this was one of the original objectives of Osteopathy, current Osteopaths tend to be inditinguishable from their Allopathic counterparts. I would say that "treating the individual" has been incorporated into all Allopathic curriculae, though the implementation in practice is lagging behind.

media section
Sources are badly needed for the media section. I added several pedantic examples that I picked up from some critical theory classes/textbooks. I wish I could dig up the actual sources but at this point in my post-college career, that is nigh impossible. If I do find the sources, i will add them. Otherwise, if anyone else can provide other examples that are more cite-able, please add them.

The citation of the doctor in 'Fight Club' prescribing "placebos" is incorrect. He recommends valerian root, which would be an effective natural sedative, research agreeing with this is cited in the valerian article. Unregistered user 23:18, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

knowledge & power
Moving this to discussion: With this gaze came tremendous power that ultimately reduced to political hegemony over those considered ill. This is due to the medical gaze's tendency to objectify the patient. By reducing a person to his or her body, the medical gaze removes a person's humanity.

While today biological reductionism has fallen out of favor with most doctors in lieu of a combination of psychology and biology, the medical gaze is still pervasive as a form of power between doctor and patient. Foucault, who was strongly critical of all forms of power, believed newer forms of medicine such as psychiatry to be outgrowths of the two-hundred year old gaze and to be equally (if not to a greater extent) flawed.

It lacks source (page references & chapters please). Foucault did not issue such moral evaluative judgments, and did not consider the "medical gaze" to be "flawed". He simply analyzed it. Second, knowledge & power are two different things for Foucault, although they come together. The "medical gaze" is not synonym of "political hegemony" (a term I doubt Foucault used there, although he might have used this Gramscian concept). Rather, it could be said something around the line that: "the medical gaze created the conditions of objectivation of the patient, his inclusion in a field of knowledge". Furthermore, "the medical gaze" as described remains quite idealist & abstract: maybe some material conditions (creation of the clinic, of an intelligible grid to understand the patient's body, etc.) might be in order. Cheers! Tazmaniacs 14:30, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion concerning the discription of the entry
I suggest editing the first sentence (or adding detail elsewhere) in order to demonstrate that, while it was Foucault's idea in the French, the translator, A.M. Sheridan Smith, chose to use the term 'medical gaze,' "Similarly, I have used the unusual 'gaze' for the common regard" (from 'Translator's Note' from The Birth of the Clinic). The article's first sentence at the time of writing this: "The term medical gaze was coined by French philosopher and critic, Michel Foucault in his book, The Birth of the Clinic (1963) (trans. 1973)..." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cdonner (talk • contribs) 14:39, 29 August 2008 (UTC)