Le sens de la maladie neurologique

Neurological diseases do not refer to mere natural facts. Their names don't refer to entities or processes to which the physician would access directly within individuals, but they rather embody a network of meanings that arose historically and conceptually and circulate representations on man, health and disease. The historical and conceptual analysis provides a better understanding of the disease's meanings through three points: (1) Why and how do physicians identify and describe the disease, mainly when it is discovered? (2) How do they differentiate from other approaches that may seem competitive such as psychiatry or psychology, and how do they legitimate the neurological status of their science and practices? (3) Which practical effects do induce the neurological disease's category in terms of therapeutics, of care, of social projects, of profession, of fears? To seize those three points helps to understand the construction of the medical look on man, its meanings and its issues, to denaturalize the medical evidence in order to highlight the human, social and epistemic complexity of what means disease.