‘The medical gaze’: Foucault, anthropology and contemporary psychiatry in Ireland

TLDR

This paper argues that in the subspecialty of psychiatry, such a filter is not so easily applied and doctors are perceived to focus on selecting the biomedical elements of patients’ problems only.

Abstract

Michel Foucault developed the concept of ‘the medical gaze’, describing how doctors fit a patient’s story into a ‘biomedical paradigm, filtering out what is deemed as irrelevant material’ (Misselbrook, 2013). Doctors are perceived within this model to focus on selecting the biomedical elements of patients’ problems only, filtering out all other elements of a person’s life story, but this paper argues that in the subspecialty of psychiatry, this is not the case, and such a filter is not so easily applied.