Essentializing

     “… doctors' approach to clinical cases followed a rather strict pattern across specialities … transforming patients' diverse concerns into specific medical questions through a process of 'essentialising': Doctors broke the patient's story down, concretised the patient's complaints and categorised the symptoms into a medical sense. Patients' existential meanings were removed, and the focus placed on the patients' functioning. By essentialising, doctors were able to handle a complex and ambiguous reality, and establish a medically relevant problem. However, the process involved a moral as well as a practical simplification. Overlooking existential meanings and focusing on purely functional aspects of patients was an integral part of clinical practice and not an individual flaw."

     Agledahl KM, Forde R, Wifstad A. Clinical essentialising: a qualitative study of doctors' medical and moral practice. Med Health Care Philos 2010; 13(2): 107-13.

     If such reductionism is what we learn and practice daily with patients, it's very likely that we'll use this approach with our personal life as well.
     Most of us have serious inner work to do if we wish to enjoy a rich, full relationship with life in all of its beautiful complexity - better late than never!

Photo: Michael Wood   http://miksang.com/