ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the development of three themes, each informed by this project: medicine’s ‘colonization of the lifeworld’ by means of its power as an expert occupation; the distortion of communication caused by medical expertise in doctor-patient exchanges; and the social and moral possibilities of achieving undistorted communication between doctor and patient. Each theme is illustrated by reference to the changing experience of childbirth in Britain. Repressions clearly have the effect of misshaping what the patient says to her therapist; in Habermas’s terminology, communication between the two becomes ‘systematically distorted’. Validity claims concerning truth are mostly implicit. It is only when such a claim is contested by another that a speaker is compelled to invoke the concept of truth directly. A speaker ‘anticipates’ an ideal speech situation on entering discourse. The lifeworld may be contrasted with the concept of system, which pertains to material rather than symbolic reproduction.
