抄録
Anthropologists such as Kleinman 1 and Helman 2 have pointed out that any society, whether Western or non-Western, exhibits pluralistic health care (or medical) system. Within these societies there are many persons or individuals who offer the patient their own particular way of explaining, diagnosing, and treating ill health. In the pluralistic health care system, we can identify three sectors of heath care or medicine ; the popular sector, the folk sector, and the professional sector. In order to rethink the symmetry (or equality) in the doctor (or healer) -patient relationship in each sector, this paper compared the relationships found in the three sectors. A healer and a patient in the popular sector can be equal because they are able to share the same basic values of health care and their positions, therefore, are at anytime interchangeable. Both in the professional sector and in the folk sector, a doctor (or a healer) and his/her patient cannot be equal because their positions are not interchangeable due to the professional dominance and medicalization of everyday life, especially in the professional sector. In conclusion, a lay people's empowerment by releasing health care knowledge and skills from the professional dominance and by sharing them could bring about a change in the pluralistic health care system that equalizes the doctor-patient relationship to the healer-patient relationship in the popular sector.
