ABSTRACT

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.

chapter |6 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|11 pages

The care paradox

chapter 2|10 pages

Science and politics

chapter 3|5 pages

Science and politics – a case history

Breast cancer screening

chapter 4|7 pages

Language, harm and overdiagnosis – a case history

The real cancer paradox

chapter 5|11 pages

Politics and consciousness

chapter 7|18 pages

Subjectivities of care – a case history

Alienating identities

chapter 8|10 pages

The opportunity costs of neoliberal pragmatist anticipatory care – a case history

A molecular genetic ‘signature’ for cancer risk

chapter 9|7 pages

Two impossibilities

Burnout and the depersonalisation of care-giving

chapter 10|7 pages

Neoliberal pragmatism incites perversion

The capitalist discourse

chapter 11|11 pages

The Oedipus complex and perverse care-provision

A case history

chapter 12|11 pages

The biopolitics of anticipatory care

Spinoza and the prohibition of health

chapter |4 pages

Conclusion