Bearing the mark of pain: mystery in medicine

Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine
Karel‐Bart Celie1, Julien Paris2
1Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Department of Surgery, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 1510 San Pablo Street, Suite 415, Los Angeles, CA, 90033, USA
2Theology Department, Boston College, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, Boston, MA, 02467, USA

Tóm tắt

AbstractDostoevsky wrote that love in action is a harsh and terrible thing compared to love in dreams. That reality is particularly evident in medicine, where there is an almost universal, involuntary participation of physicians and other healthcare workers in the suffering of their patients. This paper explores this phenomenon through the paradigm of ‘mystery’ as explained by the French existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel. A mystery is different from a problem in the sense that the former requires the active immersion of the person involved in order to be truly experienced. It is a ‘meta-problem’ that cannot be analyzed objectively and separately from the person that it affects, without changing the nature of the thing experienced. The authors contend that the human suffering encountered in medicine is one such phenomenon, and the paper draws on illustrations of this concept in art and literature. Awareness of the subtle but important difference between mystery and problem may help physicians better understand their personal entanglement with the suffering of patients.

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Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine

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