Anticipation and Medicine

This book critiques the way key normative conceptions of science in advanced capitalism both incite, and limit possibilities for, healthcare and render compassion itself prey to ideology. The author examines the concepts of health, knowing through science, and human subjectivity in relation to philosophical and psychoanalytic ideas.

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Anticipation in Medicine: A Critical Analysis of the Science, Praxis and Perversion of Evidence Based Healthcare looks at an aspect of healthcare rarely addressed: how the capitalist interest in diagnosis and treatment impacts upon the patient and, by extension, the system of healthcare itself. Using Lacanian structures of discourse, Dr. Owen Dempsey critiques the praxis of scientific Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) applied to anticipatory and preventive healthcare under capitalism and ultimately, what constitutes good care.

This book features up-to-date case studies that combine real-life patients and the psychological impacts of anticipatory care such as cancer screening in the modern era. The book identifies the dangers of anticipatory care in medicine and provides compelling and new possibilities for progressing towards a more emancipatory conception of a less knowing, less apparently compassionate, as well as less harmful practice of health care.

This is fascinating reading for academics, students and practitioners interested in critical health psychology, the practice of ‘scientific’ medicine, and the politics of health and social care.