Marcum: o médico não é um mecânico do corpo

Instead of reducing the patient to the physical body alone, the humanistic or humane practitioner, who is not just a mechanic, encounters the patient as a person composed of both mind and body. Importantly, the mind and body often influence the behavior and state of each other in a reciprocal manner. Thus, the mind and body are complementary aspects of the patient and both must be considered when making a diagnosis or choosing a therapy. For the patient’s illness may be more than simply organic (a disease) but may also include the psychological and social (an illness or a sickness, respectively). Causation then is more than physical but also includes information concerning the individual patient qua person. Moreover, rather than being considered just a machine composed of individual parts separate from any background or framework, the patient is viewed as an organism or a person within a socioeconomic environment or cultural background. And as an organism or a person the patient is more than simply the sum of separate body parts but also exhibits properties that surpass the aggregation of those parts. Thus, an important ontological commitment for some humanistic models is organicism.