Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Objectivation basically means to make no difference between a dead or living
body, between a nonorganic mechanism and a human being - in the way you look
at it or in the way you observe or examine it. Consequentially, if you are accepted
as a 'patient' you will get less respect and you have to give up your privacy to a
large extend - much more than in other situations. And persons although demand
less respect and privacy, as soon as they accept themselves as being a patient.
Entering hospital or a surgery, first of all one has to give up to a large degree the
disposal of one's time, of one's very personal space and boundaries - much more
than in other commonplace situations we know. What makes the difference is the
demand of disrobement for example, and a certain kind of infantilization in behaving
towards a patient, more or less incapacitation, that takes place almost automatically
in medical care. That happens to be a really common and accepted practice in
the last decades, because of the demands of economization and efficiency, which
became the top-level values also in the field of medicine and for the service and
habits of doctors and nursing staff.
If you are a patient in a hospital e.g., it's suddenly 'normal' and sanctified to be
treated as an object without will and autonomy, in a deeper sense also without being
allowed to feel frightened or to be shamed. Compared to all other situations we are
used to, that is a kind of strange social convention generating suppressed feelings.
This is the price for the promise of health we have to pay as tribute for the high level
ideal of objectivation in the technical world and society.
In any other situation, if one lies almost naked in bed, one would be horrified if an
unknown person (nurse, doctors) came into his bedroom at any time, even without
knocking at the door, or if a group of unknown people (as happening during the ward
round) stands around an uncovered patient's body without asking and talking about
him in the third person's perspective. But when you are a patient in hospital, it's
said to be 'normal'. The fact that this kind of - strictly speaking - strange behavior
and social interaction is accepted in our daily life as a matter of course, is perhaps
only legitimated by an implicit believe and trust in medicine as an ultimate authority
- morally and epistemologically. No other institution in society demands to occupy
the moral high ground as unquestionable as medicine in science and practice does.
From our childhood we are trained to repress feelings of shame or abasement in
medical practice or institutions. In some respect, it's necessary to act and behave
as if you do not have boundaries or need for privacy. But the price of this social
accepted methodological abasement is in fact a temporary reduction of self-esteem.
And the only way to hold one's head up, is to train the disconnection between mind
and body - in fact a good strategy to keep inner distance to the loss of respect, in
order to account yourself also as an object. It is difficult to estimate, even more
to measure the effect and consequences in terms of negative outcome on healing
process and therapy. Thus it is an open question and it opens a wide field of future
research about the role of negative and self-respect depressing feelings like shame
and abasement on healing process and resistance to therapy.
