The Many Faces of the Clinic: A Levinasian View

Abstract

People go to doctors for many reasons: for the diagnosis and treatment of illnesses, to make sense of unusual experiences in their bodies that they suspect may be related to illness, for reassurance that they do not have a serious condition, for advice about how to avoid such conditions, for help in dealing with life crises like unemployment, bereavement, marriage breakdown, or for assistance with the passage through natural processes like pregnancy and menopause. Often, several such reasons occur together.

O trees of life, when will your winter come? We’re never single-minded, unperplexed, like migratory birds. Outstript and late, we suddenly thrust into the wind, and fall into unfeeling ponds. We comprehend flowering and fading simultaneously. And somewhere lions still roam, all unaware, in being magnificent, of any weakness — Rainer Maria Rilke, Fourth Duino elegy ¹ People go to doctors for many reasons: for the diagnosis and treatment of illnesses, to make sense of unusual experiences in their bodies that they suspect may be related to illness, for reassurance that they do not have a serious condition, for advice about how to avoid such conditions, for help in dealing with life crises like unemployment, bereavement, marriage breakdown, or for assistance with the passage through natural processes like pregnancy and menopause. Often, several such reasons occur together.