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Medical Humanities Blog

Posted: 14 Jul 2011 06:55 AM PDT

Daniel S. Goldberg (East Carolina University) has an article out in the latest Journal of Medicine & Philosophy entitled Eschewing Definitions of the Therapeutic Misconception: A Family Resemblance Analysis. Here is the Abstract:

Twenty-five years after the term "therapeutic misconception' (TM) first entered the literature, most commentators agree that it remains widespread. However, the majority of scholarly attention has focused on the reasons why a patient cum human subject might confuse the goals of research with the goals of therapy. Although this paper addresses the social and cultural factors that seem to animate the TM among subjects, it also fills a niche in the literature by examining why investigators too might operate under a similar confusion. In framing these issues, the paper expressly adopts a Wittgensteinian approach to evaluating the TM, suggesting that interlocutors do not need any analytic definition of the TM to use the term meaningfully in thinking about the moral implications of the TM in practice.

I've covered the TM previously on MH Blog, and although the topic strikes me as both interesting and important, it will probably be the last thing I write on research ethics for some time. I continue to base a lot of my metaethical and moral epistemological frameworks on later Wittgenstein, and this paper helps with my process of working some of that out.

Comments and suggestions are, as ever, most welcome.