Humanization-alienation dialectic as a tool for the critical comprehension of health practices dehumanization: Some conceptual elements

Abstract

Considering the contemporary transformations that the health and medical work has been undergoing and their implications to the relationships established between their constitutive subjects, the present essay aims to demonstrate how the integration of these elements in a framework structured by the humanization-alienation dialectic relation may contribute to the comprehension of the causes of a large part of the conflicts and crises that are evidenced nowadays and analyzed in the perspective of health services and practices dehumanization. The application of this theoretical perspective proves to be very productive within the process of analysing the dynamics that contribute to or, oppositely, obstruct a future that would enable lives full of meaning to individuals and collectivities. This should be, in our opinion, the final goal of the movements that intend to humanize the health practices.