Psychosomatic Subjects and the Duty to Be Well - Personal Agency Within Medical Rationality

Abstract

This paper compares the epistemologies of psychosomatics and biomedicine and examines their interrelation. In so far as die psychosomatic subject constitutes both the locus and the ultimate responsible agency of preventive intervention, the event of disease has become a moment of verification of the moral aptitude of individuals to form part of the society within which they live. While the 'right to health' is preserved through the biomedical sanction of entry into the sick-role, it is tempered by a 'duty to stay well'. Correspondingly, the categories of health and illness have become vehicles for the self-production and exercise of subjectivities endowed with the faculties of choice and will.