Subjetivity in the process of falling ill

Abstract

The medical approach to both mind and body illnesses, wher the university discourse together with the master’s discourse/scietific knoledge prevails, and where only the biological, i.e., anything that can be measured, pondered, vsualized, would have place and has acquired the status of implicit dogma, generating a demand from the exigency (the right to be healed and the phisician´s obligation to heal, restore) that ignores (being both ignorance and denial included in this concept) that the subject who falls ill is not just a body, but a subject of the subconsciousness. A subject who stands not only on the real register of his/her body but also on that of words and images. When we say images we are referring to the idea we have about our body and the other’s, also captured in symbolic representations by means of the language.

The process of falling ill is not only going to be modulated in every individual by his/her genetic information but also by his/her personal and family history and his/her own relationship with the, according to the lacanian terminology, so-called «enjoyment» (something related to the idea of excitement, tension, waste).

If the doctor, either a psicoanalist or not, does not take into consideration this dark side of the patient, he/she will be losing capacity to understand the illness process and, what is more important, to understand the imaginary interactions which are subcounsciously brought back to life over doctor´s figure, the so-called transference described by Freud, which could become a firstclass terapeutic tool when is appropriately used.