A man is told by his doctor: “I’m the doctor and you’re the patient. I’m the healthy one and you’re the sick one.” This man was shocked by his doctor’s response but another person could feel relieved. Some of us need the reassurance from our health care providers taking control and professing their expertise for the sake of our healing. Others feel disempowered by such a statement and suffer from the underlying presumption that being healthy is good and normal and being sick is pathological and bad.
My main thesis is that health and normality are major causes of illness and suffering. Paradoxically health and normality promoters contribute to the very thing they want to prevent. There is no objective state of good health and normalcy. All is individual and subjective. Health and normality are continuously shaped by cultural processes, worldviews and values that are normative in the sense that they define momentary norms and behaviors. Health and sickness are individual processes and experiences that are embedded in a cultural context that defines what is “good” and “bad”.
A new medical paradigm will go beyond linear material causes, and mind, body, and society polarizations. This new medicine will see body and behavioral experiences not only as local, physical or psychological difficulties, but also as non-linear, complex adaptive processes that express the depth of our being and our communities. This new paradigm will increase our understanding of the complexity and diversity of health and normality.