ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies developmental precursors and current unconscious conflicts in biomedical practitioners’ life experience that set the stage for the choice of medicine and of a particular practice style as in part a solution to these deeply personal issues. It explores unconscious and family-of-origin issues in the motivation to become a physician. The chapter argues that the “source of the Nile/’ the fons et origo of biomedicine, if not of all culturally constituted symbols and metaphors and practices, lies in those experiences and motivational forces that lead a person to invest in and identify with or to develop a particular set of cultural meanings. The chapter describes the dynamic link between the personality of the practitioner and the culture of medicine and the society it serves and embodies. It concludes by briefly exploring the utility of a psychoanalytically informed ethnographic approach to future research, teaching, and practice in American biomedical culture.
