ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the role played by the patients’ families in accessing information, and provides the specific issue of lying on the part of the patients. The statistical studies aiming to discover the percentage of patients who want to obtain information are sometimes only of limited use since patients and doctors have a very different understanding of the term ‘information’, and of the phrase ‘obtaining information’. The chapter examines the perception they have of the doctors’ discourses, and the practice of lying that they themselves partake in, in order to discover their mechanisms, symmetries and distinctive features. The information patients are given on their treatment enables them to manage its negative effects. Communication between doctors and patients is very specific. This pertains to the extreme complexity ofthe relationship itself, which brings together unilateral relations oftrust and submission. Patients manage information largely by managing their symptoms.
