dc.contributor.author |
Bray, Peter |
en |
dc.contributor.editor |
Sandberg, E |
en |
dc.contributor.editor |
Scheurer, M |
en |
dc.date.accessioned |
2015-11-27T04:00:52Z |
en |
dc.date.issued |
2014 |
en |
dc.identifier.citation |
In Culture, Experience, Care: (Re-)Centring the Patient. Editors: Sandberg, E, Scheurer, M. 73-84. Inter-Disciplinary Press, Oxford 2014 |
en |
dc.identifier.uri |
http://hdl.handle.net/2292/27588 |
en |
dc.description.abstract |
William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet is conceived as an exploration of one patient’s experiences of the power of a total institution. In the unethical and unsuccessful processes of healing his step-son’s melancholia, Claudius the chief executive and senior consultant of Denmark’s Elsinore Castle transforms Hamlet’s condition from princely protégé to patient. As a noncompliant inmate Hamlet goes about creatively finding ways to both resist his helpers and assemble evidence that will prove the institution’s power base is corrupted by its new leader. His increasing reluctance to see the world as the state sanctions it gives the institution reason to treat his personal challenges as attacks on its integrity. Thus, Shakespeare’s play exposes the sickness of total systems that vest power in a single individual. It also shows how a diagnosis of complicated mourning, experienced as a difficult personal process of intra-psychic transformation, might be reframed by its onlookers as ‘madness.’ By showing the tragic consequences of withholding or intentionally ignoring the true source of a patient’s disease, Hamlet’s case demonstrates the difficulties of making correct diagnoses and giving appropriate treatment. At best there is a fragile symbiosis between a doctor and patient. In Hamlet the institution misdiagnoses, threatens, renders incompetent, and denies Hamlet the patient a say in his own healing processes. However, in his institutionally inconvenient condition he is provided with opportunities for the kind of unsupervised self-analysis and experimentation that ultimately risks his life and those of the community. After his assault on the body politic, steps are taken to fully remove him from the public gaze. Hamlet’s case serves to illustrate how a unitary approach to patient care that disenfranchises and disempowers, tragically disables the service relationship and totally restricts its staff in their work. |
en |
dc.description.uri |
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/product/culture-experience-care-re-centring-the-patient/ |
en |
dc.publisher |
Inter-Disciplinary Press |
en |
dc.relation.ispartof |
Culture, Experience, Care: (Re-)Centring the Patient |
en |
dc.rights |
Items in ResearchSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated. Previously published items are made available in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. |
en |
dc.rights.uri |
https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm |
en |
dc.title |
Hamlet Is Sick: Patient Care in the Total Institution |
en |
dc.type |
Book Item |
en |
pubs.begin-page |
73 |
en |
dc.rights.holder |
Copyright:
Inter-Disciplinary Press |
en |
pubs.end-page |
84 |
en |
pubs.place-of-publication |
Oxford, England |
en |
dc.rights.accessrights |
http://purl.org/eprint/accessRights/RestrictedAccess |
en |
pubs.elements-id |
504575 |
en |
pubs.org-id |
Education and Social Work |
en |
pubs.org-id |
Counselling,HumanServ &Soc.Wrk |
en |
pubs.record-created-at-source-date |
2015-11-11 |
en |