Universitat Internacional de Catalunya

Anthropology

Anthropology
6
7606
1
Second semester
FB
Medicina social, habilidades de comunicación e iniciación a la investigación
Antropología
Main language of instruction: Spanish

Teaching staff


Dr. ESCRIBANO LÓPEZ, Francesc Xavier - xescriba@uic.es

Teachers will attend to the students at an agreed time arranged by e-mail.

Dr. Xavier Escribano: xescriba@uic.es

Dra. Andrea Rodríguez-Prat: arodriguezp@uic.es

Dr. Abel Miro: amiro@uic.es


Introduction

Given the increasing specialization of medicine, health professionals need to have the resources and skills to avoid fragmentary or partial views of the patient. To achieve this goal, the subject of Anthropology offers students a comprehensive and coherent development of the idea of the human being that facilitates the recognition of the plurality of their dimensions (physical, mental, social and spiritual) and an appropriate way to integrate them.

Concepts such as health, illness, pain or suffering require, to be properly understood, a global view of the human being which must take into account its vulnerability and its dignity. The subject of Anthropology will give students a profound and rigorous reflection on the nature of the human being, its possibilities and limits, a reflection that the practice of a health profession inevitably requires.

Finally, the subject of Anthropology will provide the students with a better understanding of the necessary coordination between the technical and the human dimension of their profession. The understanding of such coordination will serve to overcome the limitations of a purely technical response to disease and illness and will also contribute to improving the humanistic aspects of the professional skills of the students, meeting in this way society’s demands.

Pre-course requirements

None

Objectives

Critically and reflectively ponder those interpretations or images of the human being that prevail in our socio-cultural system, taking into account in a special way their implications in the conception of health and disease, pain and suffering. Achieve a global vision of the human person, as a complex and multidimensional reality, taking into account at the level of philosophical reflection the numerous results achieved thanks to the current development of the various biological, human and social sciences. Provide conceptual instruments to rigorously analyze and assess the different problems that human existence presents in the contemporary world, emphasizing in a very special way those that refer to the health world, as is the case, for example, of those situations in which dependency, vulnerability or fragility of the human person becomes evident.

Competences/Learning outcomes of the degree programme

1. Achieve adequate integration of the technical side and the human side of Medicine. 2. Discover the need to develop a person-centered medicine. 3. Become aware of the complex reality of the human being and of the plurality of dimensions that make it up as a person. 4. Understand the important implications of social and cultural diversity for the understanding of disease and health. 5. Discover the meaning and value of the fundamental principle of the dignity of the human person, particularly in areas related to pain, illness or any other situation of vulnerability and limitation. 6. Acquire an understanding of the importance of interpersonal communication in the context of the therapeutic relationship. 7. To reflect on the effect of technological mediation on the medical view of the patient and on the development of the therapeutic relationship. 8. Understand the importance of acquiring the fundamental principles and virtues of an ethic of care: compassion, competence, confidentiality, trust. 9. Reflect on pain and suffering. 10. Delve into the personal, social, cultural and spiritual experience of health and illness.
  • 08 - Recognize the basis of normal human behavior and its disorders.
  • 34 - Ability for critical thinking, creativity and constructive skeptisim with a focus on research within professional practice.
  • 35 - Understand the importance and limitations of scientific thinking in the study, prevention and treatment of disease.
  • CB-1 - To have acquired advanced knowledge and demonstrated, within the context of highly specialised scientific and technological research, detailed comprehension based on theoretical and practical aspects and a working methodology from one or more fields of study.
  • CB-3 - To know how to evaluate and select the appropriate scientific theories and precise methodologies required by their field of study to make judgements based on incomplete or limited information. Where necessary and appropriate, this includes a reflection on the ethical and social responsibility linked to the solution suggested in each case.
  • CTS-3 - To promote and ensure respect for human rights and the principles of universal accessibility, equality, non-discrimination as well as the values of democracy and a culture of peace.

Learning outcomes of the subject

1. The student has acquired sufficient conceptual elements to detect any reductionist vision of the human being. In particular, it can criticize and overcome a fragmented consideration of the patient (as a mere collection of organs and systems) or a reduction of the sick person to their pathology. 2. The student knows the philosophical and anthropological foundations of the dignity of the human person, is able to expose and argue them coherently and apply them to multiple practical cases related to their professional practice. 3. The student acquires a global and multi-perspective understanding of the human person, so that health and disease cease to be exclusively biological or physiological phenomena for him, and he is able to contemplate them also from the point of view of their psychological components, social, cultural, ethical and spiritual. 4. The student acquires a broad conceptual background to rationally analyze and understand the fundamental structure of the human person, emphasizing especially the importance of their corporality, affectivity, freedom, sociability, dignity, vulnerability and transcendence. 5. The student acquires a greater degree of personal self-knowledge, enhances their moral sensitivity regarding the suffering and fate of others, discovers the importance of attitudinal values in extreme situations, and learns to reflect evaluatively and critically on nature and the condition human.

Syllabus


  1. What is Anthropology?
  2. The diversity of anthropological knowledge.
  3. The role of anthropological knowledge in Health Science

  1. The animal who interprets himself.
  2. The problem of anthropological reductionism.

  1. The physical interior and the vital interior.
  2. The classical notion of soul (psyche).
  3. Levels or degrees of life.
  4. The distinguishing features of the human being.

  1. The naked animal. The unspecific functionality of human being.
  2. The articulation between Nature and Culture: hand and intelligence.
  3. The process of learning and the plurality of cultures.
  4. The levels of self-realization of living beings: organic-natural, socio-cultural, personal-spiritual.

  1. A brief history of the perception of the body.
  2. The experience of embodiment.
  3. Phenomenology of the senses.
  4. The paradigm of the lived body and disease.

  1. The basic animal instincts.
  2. The trend of human dynamics.
  3. Nature, Culture and Sexuality
  4. Emotions from an ethical perspective.

  1. The symbolic animal: from voice to word
  2. Specific features of human language.
  3. Functions of language.
  4. Emotions from an ethical perspective.

  1. Voluntary and involuntary. Desire and choice.
  2. Free realization of human person.
  3. Kinds of freedom: Physical, psychological, moral and political
  4. The biographical dimension of personal existence.

  1. The social dimension of the human person.
  2. Intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships.
  3. The relationship with nature: the technological civilization.
  4. The biographical dimension of personal existence.

  1. A history of the recognition of the dignity of the person.
  2. The foundation of dignity.
  3. Naturalism and Personalism: the discussion about the notion of person in the context of contemporary bioethics.
  4. The special dignity of the patient.

  1. Suffering and conscious life.
  2. Levels of pain or suffering: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
  3. Philosophical understanding of suffering. Attitudes regarding pain.
  4. Suffering and the necessity of meaning.
  5. The Christian meaning of suffering.

  1. Meaning and interpretation of disease throughout history.
  2. Illness as an existential crisis.
  3. Illness: autonomy and dependence.
  4. Social attitudes regarding illness.

  1. Human consciousness of death.
  2. Cultural and personal modulation of death: attitudes towards death.
  3. The concelament of death in our society.
  4. The question of survival after death.

Teaching and learning activities

In person



The subject will be taught ordinarily through theoretical sessions and practical sessions. For the development of practical classes, the group will be divided into two subgroups (A and B). The content of the master classes will consist of the development of the main themes and concepts of the subject detailed in the syllabus. As regards the practical classes, they will be based mainly on the analysis of texts and audiovisual documents that have the purpose of illustrating and deepening the concepts explained above. Sufficiently in advance, the students will be able to find in the Moodle system the orientation and the necessary documents to prepare the practical sessions.

Evaluation systems and criteria

In person



 

- Midterm Exam: 10%

- Final Exam: 50%

- Practical Part: 40%

 

Both the final exam and the practical part of the subject must be passed so that they make average with the rest of the values

 

Bibliography and resources

  MANUALES BÁSICOS DE CONSULTA
- Amengual, G., Antropología Filosófica, BAC, Madrid, 2007.
- Torralba i Roselló, F., Antropología del cuidar, Fundación Mapfre Medicina, Barcelona, 1998.
- Vicente Arregui, J. y Choza, J., Filosofía del hombre. Una antropología de la intimidad, ICF-UNAV, Rialp, Madrid, 1995.
- Yepes Stork, R., Fundamentos de antropología, Eunsa, Pamplona, 1997.

OBRAS GENERALES
- Anrubia, E. (ed.), La fragilidad de los hombres. La enfermedad, la filosofía y la muerte, Eds. Cristiandad, Madrid, 2008.
- Anrubia, E. (ed.), Filosofías del dolor y la muerte, Ed. Comares, Granada, 2007.
- Escribano, X. (ed.), Territoris humans de la salut. Societat, cultura i valors en el món sanitari, Ed. Dux, Barcelona, 2008.
- Roqué, M. V. (ed.), El sentido del vivir en el morir, Thomson-Reuters Aranzadi, Pamplona, 2013
 
BIBLIOGRAFÍA GENERAL
-  Alsina, J., Los orígenes helénicos de la medicina occidental,  Barcelona: Labor, 1992.
-  Andorno, R., Bioética y dignidad de la persona, Tecnos, Madrid, 1998.
- Buber, M., ¿Qué es el hombre?, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Madrid, 1986.
- Choza, J., Humanismo de la ancianidad; en Los otros humanismos, Pamplona: Eunsa, 1994.
- Gadamer, H. G., El estado oculto de la salud, Gedisa, Barcelona, 2001.
- Gehlen, A., El hombre. Su naturaleza y su lugar en el mundo, Sígueme, Salamanca, 1987.
- González García, M. (comp.), Filosofía y dolor; Madrid: Tecnos, 2006.
- Hennezel, Marie de, La mort íntima, Columna, Barcelona, 2000.
- Jaspers, K., La práctica médica en la era tecnológica; Barcelona: Gedisa, 2003.
- Jonas, H., Técnica, medicina y ética, Paidós, Barcelona, 1997.
- Jünger, E., Sobre el dolor, Tusquets, Barcelona, 2003.
- Laín-Entralgo, Pedro, La relación médico-enfermo, Revista de Occidente, Madrid, 1964.
- Laín-Entralgo, P., El arte de la curación por la palabra en la antigüedad clásica, Barcelona: Anthropos
- Landsberg, P. L., Ensayo sobre la experiencia de la muerte, Ed. Caparrós, Madrid, 1995.
- Ortega y Gasset, J., Meditación de la técnica y otros ensayos; Madrid: Alianza, 2000
- Pellegrino, E. D. i Thomasma, D.A., A philosophical basis of Medical Practice. Toward a Philosophy and Ethic of the Healing Professions, New York, Oxford University Press, 1981.
- Nussbaum, La terapia del deseo, Paidós, Barcelona, 2003.
- Roqué, Mª. V., Médico y paciente. El lado humano de la medicina, Ed. Dux, Barcelona, 2007.
- Russo, G., Il medico. Identità e ruoli nella società di oggi, Edizioni Internazionali, Roma, 2004
- Scheler, M., Muerte y supervivencia, Ed. Encuentro, Madrid, 2001.
- Scheler, M., El puesto del hombre en el cosmos, Revista de Occidente, Madrid, 1936.
- Torralba, F., Filosofía de la Medicina, Institut Borja de Bioètica. Fundación Mapfre Medicina, Madrid, 2001.
- Vicente Arregui, J., El horror de morir; Barcelona, Tibidabo, 1992.

TÍTULOS DE INTERÉS
- Bauby, J.-D., La escafandra y la mariposa, Ed. Planeta, Barcelona, 2008.
- Pérez de Laborda, M. et alia, ¿Quiénes somos? Cuestiones en torno al ser humano. Ed. Eunsa, Pamplona, 2018.
- Sacks, O., L'home que va confondre la seva dona amb un barret, Ed. Proa, Barcelona, 2001.
- Szczeklik, A., Catarsis, Sobre el poder curativo de la naturaleza y el arte, Acantilado, Barcelona, 2010.
- Szczeklik, A., Core. Sobre enfermos, enfermedades y la búsqueda del alma de la medicina, Acantilado, Barcelona, 2012.

 

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