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Lines of reconstruction and extension in the Parsonian sociology of illness

1976; Elsevier BV; Volume: 10; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/0037-7856(76)90001-9

1879-2987

Eugene B. Gallagher,

Management and Organizational Studies

Talcott Parsons' paradigms of the sick role and the therapeutic relationship form the basis for his sociology of illness and have provided the impetus to a substantial amount of empirical research and conceptualization in medical sociology. These paradigms are linked to the conceptions of illness as deviance and the physician as an agent of social control. In the author's opinion, further theoretical development is necessary to account for significant health/illness phenomena which the deviance conception cannot encompass. The phenomena under consideration are: (1) chronic illness, wherein there is no possibility of the patient's return to health; (2) patient self-help and self-treatment; (3) the acquiescent posture of the medical profession in the face of widespread health-risking behavior; (4) the failure of many health institutions to promote maximum rehabilitation in patients; and (5) the contradiction between the high position of personal health in the hierarchy of American values and the extent of preventible ill health. Later Parsonian formulations which view illness as impaired adaptive capacity rather than deviance, and which attribute less importance to social control and to medical instrumentality, offer a fruitful prospect for a more thoroughgoing conceptualization.