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l'Information Psychiatrique. Volume 82, Number 2, 159-64, Février 2006, Histoire de la psychiatrie

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Author(s) : Eduardo Luis Mahieu

Summary : The influence of the clinical act in Greek thought.Medicine and philosophy have mutually enriched each other since their beginnings. W. Jaeger puts at around 500 BC the moment at which medical science moved beyond the limits of a profession to become a cultural force in the life of the Greeks. The clinical act of Hippocrates and the elaboration of his method through the Corpus transformed the foundations of Western philosophy. The ethical science of Socrates, tekné psycagogia, the psyqués therapeia, which occupies a central role in Plato’s dialogues, would have been inconceivable without the clinical act. The method elaborated empirically by Hippocrates, born of clinical praxis, is systematized and theorized by Plato in Phedre. The medical clinical act, this incarnation of an ethical act with ethical objectives of a practical nature, can thus be found as a discipline at the birth of dialectics and as a reflection at the birth of ethics.

Keywords : Hippocrates, Plato, Phedre, philosophy, history of medicine, act, clinical, praxis, ethical