Medical pluralism during and after socialism: A study of psychotronics in the former Czechoslovakia

Abstract

The paper starts with a discussion on the concept of medical pluralism, then presents a theoretical framework of the exclusive medical model, which recognizes only one legal system for medicine. The author then considers psychotronics activities as a specific form of alternative healthcare, along with describing and analysing the healthcare situation that existed during the socialist period in former Czechoslovakia and compares it with the contemporary pluralistic situation that emerged in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The findings of this paper suggest that, despite the prevalent rationalist view during the socialist period and the tendency to promote biomedicine as the only legitimate and superior healthcare practice, the conditions for the development of pluralism in medical healthcare were nevertheless created. The paper concludes that research on the shifting relationship between alternative medicine and mainstream medicine reveals how scientific objectification fluctuates, or at least is negotiable, under the influence of social circumstances.