Science and clinical

Abstract

The relationship between two views, the scientific and the clinical, is addressed when contemplating the human being in his suffering. Subjective uniqueness will always difficult a simplistic statistical approach like the one that underlies so-called evidence- based medicine. The importance of the unconscious underlines the irreducibility of the clinical gaze to the scientific one, even though the former welcomes the advances that science brings to the knowledge of the human organism.

Keywords
Science, clinic, suffering.


Text
[Automatic translation from Spanish]:

When we speak about clinical, we allude to the health-illness binomial. In 1948, the WHO established a concept of health that made all of us ill, as it defined it as «a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not just the absence of sicknesses or diseases». This definition is not a minor issue because, since it has been based, in practice, on hedonistic obligation and generalized medicalization.
[…]
When we consider life, illness and death, two great sights are possible without going into the philosophical field, even if they involve it; these are the scientific and clinical look, among which there are encounters and dissonances.
[…]
Approaching science means a fascinating perspective from three sides, the epistemic, the applied and the aesthetic. Science shows us a contemplation of the existing one that encompasses many orders of magnitude, both in the space dimension and in the temporal dimension. At the same time, a range of these orders also includes the complex, the life. This knowledge has been successfully applied to the maintenance of our health and to a more comfortable life. At the same time, what science shows is of extraordinary beauty.
[…]
In the area of human suffering, the scientific eye must be harmonized with the clinical perspective associated with subjectivity, which must always be a unique relationship. There are several aspects of scientific gaze that may favor or distort clinical relationship. […]

Javier Peteiro Cartelle
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