ABSTRACT
Men who give birth may seem contradictory. To the conservative mind, such contradictions may feel uncomfortable. The medical humanities act to address a fundamental contradiction in medical education, just as they serve to raise another set of contradictions. In double stimulation, a temporary resolution of contradictions raises another set of contradictions but at a new level of sophistication and meaning. Medicine has been unable to deal with its own contradictions or paradoxes. Medical practice is fluid, complex and shot through with uncertainty and contradictions. To ground medicine and medical education in contradiction and uncertainty offers an opportunity to draw on the value of the arts and humanities as a resource for medicine and medical education and for medical students’ identity formations. Other disciplines, such as the social sciences related to medicine, study the symptoms and in some cases suggest how they may be addressed through cure, management or mobilization.
