An Introduction to the Semiotic Approach to the Placebo Responses

Abstract

Today, the placebo effect is the Cinderella of a new medical world; a phenomenon which in one night turned from a platitudinous problem and paternalistic sham in practice and a disturber factor in clinical trials, to meaning response, spirit of practice and an extremely valuable subject for research. Now, more than ever, the paradoxical nature of the placebo response has manifested itself in the medical community. One can find a vast number of articles which introduce placebos as a chemo-physical (non-specific) effect or a semantic/cognitive (specific) effect; as noise of biomedical studies or a signal of doctor-patient communication; as a very beneficial, safe, and common therapeutic agent, or as immoral interventions which ignore the principle of autonomy. One can infer that there are very serious dilemmas in this field of practice and research: pragmatic (specific and non-specific), methodological (desired and undesired), and ethical (beneficence vs. autonomy). Introducing these dilemmas shows the paradoxical and complex nature of placebo responses and also addresses the clinical and paradigmatic opportunities and restrictions. We will discuss these topics and their biosemiotic explanations further in the following chapters. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)