What happens when doctors and scientists begin to reflect on their own experience and come to regard psychiatry as a dialogic process of subjective and the objective? How is it possible to enact what Shin-ichiro Kumagaya and others have called "tojisha-ka" (becoming tojishas or users) -which comprises subjective narrativization and objective generalization? Drawing on medical anthropological perspectives, I first examine the move towards subjective narrativization in North American medical education through a focus on "illness narratives". Secondly, I examine the move towards objective generalization attempted by psychiatric users, particularly in the UK. And thirdly, I raise questions about the dialogic relationships between subjective narrativization and objective generalization through the rise of digital psychiatry as a tool of self-reflection (as in self-tracking). Analyzing psychiatry not only as a technology of objectivity but also of subjectivity, this paper explores the future implications of "tojisha-ka".
Author's abstract
Psychiatry as a Technology of Subjectivity: A Perspective from Medical Anthropology
Department of Human Sciences, Faculty of Letters and Graduate School of Human Relations, Keio University
Psychiatria et Neurologia Japonica
124: 637-644, 2022
<Keywords:subjectivity, medical anthropology, tojisha-ka, subjective narrativization, objective generalization>