Kobiety jako czynnik przemilczany. Wybrane wątki epistemologiczne powstawania medycznego zjawiska anoreksji

Abstract

The author uses Ludwig Fleck’s idea of mechanisms of development of scientific facts and the crucial notion of his, the psychosociology of scientific knowledge (such as a thought style, thought collective, scientific fact, etc.) This is done in order to discuss basic processes which have accompanied the development of the medical phenomenon of anorexia (the history of anorexia, and the early attempts at naming and diagnosing it). The author emphasizes that to being able to established this phenomenon as a medical fact, a more common and appreciated medical thought style had to be developed. She confronts anorexia as an illness in the medical thought style (an individual, homogenic disorder of psychical etiology) with the feminist thought style, where social and cultural factors play a major role in understanding the same phenomenon. Given the fact that 90-95% of anorexia patients are women, feminists underline that it should be treated more as a radical version of a more common affliction of our culture (with its obsession with thinness, good looks, attractiveness). They notice that as such, it cannot be cured on the individual level, for more systematic changes in the way of thinking about subjectivity, femininity and corporeality are required. It seems that there are no effective methods of healing anorexia in the medical thought-style; in contrast, the feminist view raises hopes for postulating new ways of treating this phenomenon, which gives us possibilities of new research and new ideas for eliminating it.