Autonomy and Clinical Medicine

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

   PDF

2. The Dynamics of Autonomy

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

      PDF

   2. Autonomy as a Behavioral Concept

      • Jurrit Bergsma, David C. Thomasma

      Pages 3-22

   3. Autonomy, Identity, and Physical Disruption

      • Jurrit Bergsma, David C. Thomasma

      Pages 23-43

   4. Autonomy in the Doctor-Patient Encounter

      • Jurrit Bergsma, David C. Thomasma

      Pages 45-73

3. Reflections on Autonomy

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 75-75

      PDF

   2. Modes of Autonomy

      • Jurrit Bergsma, David C. Thomasma

      Pages 77-88

   3. Freedom and the Social Goals of Medicine

      • Jurrit Bergsma, David C. Thomasma

      Pages 89-101

   4. Moving Beyond Autonomy to the Person with Illness

      • Jurrit Bergsma, David C. Thomasma

      Pages 103-119

   5. Autonomy and Ethical Modes of the Doctor-Patient Relationship

      • Jurrit Bergsma, David C. Thomasma

      Pages 121-141

4. Conclusion

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 143-143

      PDF

   2. Reconstituting the Doctor-Patient Relation

      • Jurrit Bergsma, David C. Thomasma

      Pages 145-160

5. Back Matter

   Pages 161-202

   PDF

This book arises from a two-fold conviction. The first is that autonomy, despite recent critiques about its importance in bioethics and philosophy of medicine, and the traditional resistance of medicine to its "intrusion" into the doctor-patient relation, is a fundamental building block of an individual's identity and mechanisms for dealing with illness, disease, and incapacity. As such it is an essential component in the health care professional's armamentarium employed to bring about healing. Furthennore, it functions in a similar way to assist the health professional in his or her relations to the sick and injured. The second conviction follows from the fITst. Autonomy is far more complex than appears from the philosophical use of the concept. In this conviction we join those who have criticized the over-reliance on autonomy in modem, secular bioethics originating in the United States, but gaining ascendancy in other cultures. This critique relies on appeals to the richer contexts of persons' lives. Elsewhere the contemporary critique of autonomy appears in a variety of alternative ethical models like narrative ethics, casuist ethics, and contextualism. Indeed, postmodern criticism of all bioethics argues that there is no defensible foundation for claims that one ought to respect autonomy or any other principle as a way of ensuring that one is ethical.

• Ethics
• autonomy
• bioethics
• freedom
• health
• philosophy
• psychology

• Loyola University of Chicago, Utrecht, The Netherlands

  Jurrit Bergsma

• Medical Humanities Program, Loyola University Chicago Medical Center, Chicago, USA

  David C. Thomasma

Policies and ethics