Discourse relating to the dual processes of medicalisation and demedicalisation has become deeply embedded in the sociological literature and increasingly in the cultural fabric itself. This paper highlights several contradictory dimensions and discrepancies inherent in those notions of medicalisation and demedicalisation. Three key components of the conceptualisations of medicalisation are separated out for examination: the locus of causality, the purview of the pathogenic sphere, and status inequality or professionalisation. Data from the holistic health movement are utilised to illustrate more precisely those problematic and at times contradictory dimensions.
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Lowenberg et al. (1994) studied this question.
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