"Ivan Illich
http://naturalhealthperspective.com/tutorials/ivan-illich.html
Copyright © 1999-2005, by John H. Gohde, All Rights Reserved.
In the wellness movement, the concept of medicalization is attributed
to Ivan Illich who was, also, one of the first to advocate patient
empowerment. He was one of the movements greatest free thinkers who was
born September 4, 1926 in Vienna and died December 2, 2002 of cancer at
the age of 76 in Bremen, Germany.
Illich was a multilingual prolific writer who focused on the major
institutions of the industrialized world. He applied a "model of social
assessment of technological progress" to one of these institutions in
each of his books in order to expose their current state of
counterproductivity. His most celebrated work is generally considered
to be Deschooling Society, a critical discourse on education.
Illich's rhetoric is often described as polemic or rhetorically
intoxicating. As a gifted linguist, Illich likes to play with words. As
a nonconformist, Illich often uses words outside of their normal
context and generally accepted meanings. And, unless you read Illich
while you are in the correct frame of mind, you will find his writing
to be just wordy, flowery rants that are generally hard to follow.
Looking at his mission, Illich considers "self-reliance, autonomy, and
dignity for all, particularly the weaker"[5] to be the highest good.
Illich advocates that "individual freedom [is] realized in personal
independence."[5] He laments industrialized societies where
ever-increasing production, consumption and profit are used to measure
the quality of human life. In all of his books, Illich calls for people
to rediscover the lost art of living. His universal theme is the
"counterproductivity of overindustrialized civilization."[5] To Illich,
in order for man to live creatively, man must reassert his autonomy and
take control of his environment. From his point of view, society
created the institutions in order to serve the society. But, according
to Illich, these institutions have all become counterproductive to
their original intent because they now exist to benefit themselves
rather than the betterment of society. Health care is merely one of
many institutions that Illich has written about.
Illich's classic criticism of Western medicine is called Medical
Nemesis and was first published in 1976. A second edition was later
issued as Limits to Medicine in 1995. In Medical Nemesis Illich applies
a formulaic "model of social assessment of technological progress ...
to the criticism of the professional monopoly and of the scientism in
health care."[5]
In Medical Nemesis , Illich challenged the fundamental premise of
medical 'progress', arguing that institutional medicine is
overwhelmingly pathogenic and actively 'sickening.'
Health, argues Illich, is the capacity to cope with the human reality
of death, pain, and sickness. Technology can help, but modern medicine
has gone too far launching into a god like battle to eradicate death,
pain, and sickness. In doing so, it turns people into consumers or
objects, destroying their capacity for health.
The concept of medicalization is attributed to Ivan Illich, who first
wrote on the subject in 1976. He proposed that modern medicine had
become detrimental to society, by amongst other things, "launching ...
an inhuman attempt to defeat death, pain and sickness".[5] By doing so,
he argued, medicine had deprived individuals and societies of their
ability to cope with sickness and death.
According to Illich, "iatrogenesis cannot be understood unless it is
seen as the specifically medicial manifestation of specific
counterproductivitiy." Illich sees three levels of iatrogenesis.
Clinical iatrogenesis is the injury done to patients by ineffective,
toxic, and unsafe treatments. Social iatrogenesis results from the
medicalisation of life. Cultural iatrogenesis is the destruction of
traditional ways of dealing with and making sense of death, pain, and
sickness.
Evidence-based medicine is described in these pages 20 years before the
term was coined. The explosion in ever escalating health care costs is
both predicted and explained. Popular opinion wrongly credits medical
science with the control of disease, when in fact the general decrease
in morbidity and mortality are in fact the result of better standards
of living. Further he claims, along with Weil, that awe-inspiring
medical technology has combined with egalitarian rhetoric to create the
impression that contemporary medicine is highly effective.
Books Written by Ivan Illich
1. Education (Deschooling Society, 1971)
2. Energy, Transport and Economic Development (Energy And Equity, 1974)
3. Historicity of Materials (H2O And The Waters of Forgetfulness,
1985),
4. Literacy
(ABC, The Alphabetisation Of The Popular Mind, 1988, co-written
with Barry Sanders)
(In The Vineyard Of The Text, 1993)
5. Medicine (Medical Nemesis, 1976)
6. Technological Development (Tools For Conviviality, 1973)
7. Work
(The Right To Useful Unemployment And Its Professional Enemies,
1978)
(Shadow Work, 1981)"