Medicine and the Family: A Feminist Perspective

and the Family: A Feminist Perspective. Lucy M. Candib. New York: Basic Books. 1995. 360 pp. Hardcover ISBN 0-46502374-6. 38. 00 cloth. In 35 years, I have never seen anyone in the medical profession take on the problems related to their interaction with families. and the Family is the first book I have encountered written by a physician who critiques the role of the medical profession regarding family health care. Thank goodness there are physicians who are females, feminists, and capable of putting into words the thoughts and feelings I have experienced for years as a woman and a nurse. The theory as well as the practice of medicine, says Lucy Candib, is male-gendered. Medicine as an institution is rooted in sexism and racism and organized to the greater glory of capitalism. She offers a understanding of the conceptual problems in contemporary medical practice and proposes a feminist view of clinical work. She accomplishes she set out to do: to write about what is the matter with male Candib describes her own physician father as a physician-addict, and it was in the house of her father that she learned the magic and misery wrought by male medicine. Her early mission in life was to not keep up false appearances but to name the evils as she saw them. A product of the 1960s, she wondered if she could become a radical and a physician at the same time and bring change from within. What is wrong with male medicine? experience in the health care system offers ample ground for criticism. Historically, women have had their symptoms blamed on their reproductive systems; they have undergone excessive, inappropriate, and experimental surgery; they have been overmedicated; and to this day they are underrepresented in scientific studies that have a bearing on their health. Candib shows how traditional male medicine continues to be an intellectual tradition that is oppressive to women. She also points out that medicine, transformed by feminism, requires a change in how society views persons and relationships. The first section of the book examines the bias in the theoretical groundings of modem medicine. The second section is devoted to a feminist reconsideration of the clinical relationship. In Chapters 1 and 2, Infant and Child Development and Women's Adult Development, the author analyzes how medicine applies the template of male development to all of human development and assumes that male outlooks and experiences are representative of the viewpoints and experiences of women as well. Growth and development theory and common health care teachings reveal a preoccupation with separation and autonomy, key themes in male identity development. In this view, women's adult development appears as an aberration or truncated version of male development. Females primarily are viewed in terms of their family commitments and productive status. As an alternative, Candib begins to sketch another paradigm-that of beings-in-relation. …