Doctor-patient relationship and diagnostic complexity: signes-traces and systemic approach

GALINON-MELENEC Béatrice, translated by Kraftowitz L, Doctor-patient relationship and diagnostic complexity: signes-traces and systemic approach, Sterling Height, USA, 2012. In french : " Du diagnostic médical au diagnostic social, le signe-trace au fil des jours ", in L'Homme trace, Perspectives anthropologiques des traces contemporaines, Paris, CNRS éditions, 2011, pp. 171-191.Medical diagnosis and symptoms will be interpreted as signes-traces resulting from interactions. My (non-exhaustive) enumeration of those interactions is an attempt to introduce parameters to complexity--parameters that are individual as well as societal, and which interact in the interpretation of all signes-traces. This process clarifies the application of facets of signes-traces, and not of clinical medicine itself. The progression of thought will move from the particular to the general, progressively demonstrating the need to include more and more factors, and emphasising the complexity of the interpretation of a signe-trace. This chapter includes two large sections. The first discusses the experience of a very common communicative situation (the doctor-patient relationship) in developed countries. The second discusses fatigue as a corporeal signe-trace. This latter example is much more important to understand and position than it appears, since it is placed, paradoxically at first glance, in countries with high per capita income levels