Medical Detachment: Past and Present

This interdisciplinary workshop aims to investigate the notion of empathy toward the dead or diseased body in medical practice. It is often assumed that medical professionals develop a distinctive sensibility through repeated exposure to death and other emotionally charged situations. Historically, since the 19th century, the cultivation of emotional detachment was considered essential to the making of the medical professional, and played a central role in establishing medicine as an objective scientific discipline. However, recent research in the Medical Humanities has emphasized the need for more empathetic approaches to medical practice. By bringing together medical practitioners and humanities scholars, this workshop wishes to interrogate the historical, cultural, and pedagogical dimensions of medical detachment, to examine the challenges it creates for students and practitioners, and to consider how cultivating greater empathy might contribute to reshaping professional norms and improving the patient experience.

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Host or Publisher TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities