[Biomedicine or anthropological medicine]

The huge developments in the biological research and in the technics used in other spheres of science (physics, mathematics, chemistry, cybernetics, etc.) have a great influence on the constitution of the actual medical paradigm, as well as other non strictly scientific factors. These external factors are economic, political and cultural ones -such as the pharmaceutical industry and the public health systems, the privatisation of health services, the large amount of professionals, the advances in the medical instruments, etc. The theoritician of the Heidelberg School, called this prevalent model "biomedical" or "natural-scientific", underlying this way the tendance to the biological reductionism in relation to the concept of "illness" thus excluding the subjectivity, the history and the sociability of the patient when dealing with the pain, the inability and the death. Since the middle of XXth Century a serious criticism of this medical paradigm has been raised. This criticism revolved around the so called anthropological or integral model. This article makes a revision of this problem from a historical and epistemological outlook, revisiting some specific features in the psychiatric field.