The Capacity Model

Abstract

If illness, as an achievement, is analysed from the perspective of the doctor’s work, its imputed nature is negative in two ways. First, it represents the state of the organism or personality whose overcoming (treatment, cure) is what matters to society as a functioning system. Second, the agent of this is the medical profession, a non-business group in an otherwise business-oriented society. Thus illness as well as its treatment upset the equilibrium of exchange relationships in society and follow other than the usual domination-exploitation lines of the business world.