Disease as phenomenon of privacy: some aspects of hermeneutics and medical semiotics

Abstract

Cardinal changes in social structure have imposed boundary adjustments shifting the balance of private and public while gradually penetrating into the sphere of health and disease. As a result the tension caused by a stronger opposition of public and private makes a multilateral impact on the medical praxis, including a specific communication between the doctor and the patient, confidentiality of private medical information, attitude to in-patient clinics and therapeutic facilities, and finally, the attitude to the disease as internal or external phenomenon. Changes in the sphere of private have come to exert an ever stronger influence on cognitive, emotional and behavioral characteristics of “patients” as a specific social quasigroup banded through the act of official diagnosis.