"Medical Professionals and the Organization of Knowledge" conveys how medical people shape and organize the knowledge, perception, and experience of illness, as well as the substance of illness behavior, its management, and treatment. It is now well established that the unique symbolic equipment of the human animal is intimately connected with the functioning of the body. Freidson and Lorber believe that the proper understanding of specifically human rather than generally "animal" illness requires careful and systematic study of the social meanings surrounding illness.

The content of social meanings varies from culture to culture and from one historical period to another. As important as the content of those social meanings, is the organization of groups who serve as carriers and, sometimes, creators. In the case of illness, a critical difference exists between those considered to be competent to diagnose and treat the sick and those excluded from this special privilege--a separation as old as the shaman or medicine-man. Such differences become solidified when the expert healer becomes a member of an organized, full-time occupation, sustained in monopoly over the work of diagnosis and treatment by the force of the state and invested with the authority to make official designation of the social meanings to be ascribed to physical states.

The medical profession in advanced nations is in a vise between professional needs and political demands. Its organization and its knowledge establish many of the conditions for being recognizably and legitimately ill, and the professional controls for many of the circumstances of treatment. It thus plays a central role in shaping the experience of being ill. With this fact of modern life in mind, this collection on the character of experts or professionals in general and of medicine as a profession in particular is uniquely fashioned.

Eliot Freidson was professor emeritus of sociology in the Graduate School of Arts and Science of New York University. He served on scientific advisory boards for the Social Security Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Center for Health Services Research.

"Judith Lorber" is a professor emerita of sociology at Brooklyn College and the City College of New York Graduate Center. She is author of "Gender Inequality: Feminist Theories and Politics, Breaking the Bowls: Degendering and Feminist Change," and "Gender and the Social Construction of Illness."

Present-day health care policies in the United States are moving toward a system in which patients will be treated like industrial objects by doctors forced to work mechanically, says the distinguished medical sociologist Eliot Freidson in Medical Work in America. He offers a number of controversial proposals designed both to reduce costs and to avoid such dehumanization. In a series of essays that includes some of his classic work as well as significant new material, Freidson discusses the doctor-patient relationship, relations between physicians in various forms of medical practice, and the forces now reorganizing medical work. He shows how increasingly restrictive health insurance contracts insert a new, problematic element into both doctor-patient and colleague relations, and how bureaucratic methods of controlling medical decisions affect those relations. Finally, Freidson advances some basic principles to guide health care policy. He emphasizes that the physician's freedom to exercise discretion is essential if patients are to be treated as individuals rather than as administratively defined diagnostic categories. His recommendations include eliminating fee-for-service compensation, controlling health industry profits, and limiting the external administrative regulation of medical decisions while organizing medical work in such a way as to maximize effective and responsible self-governance.

"This is an immensely useful book for sociologists working in a wide range of sub-fields. It confirms Freidson's status among the leading exponents of the old Chicago tradition. This book is catholic in its reading, sophisticated in its arguments and cautious in its judgements."--Robert Dingwall, "Sociology"
"As an attempt to provide a complex, wide-ranging account this book should be essential reading for specialist students, and it should act as a stimulus for the extension of both empirical research and theory."--Alex Faulkner, "Sociological Review"
"Freidson's book is a concise introduction to the professions, challenging specialists with its puncturing of theoretically induced misconceptions and offering general readers a clear but critical entree to the theoretical literature concerning this central aspect of modern society."--Andrew Abbott, "Science"
"This is a stimulating and well-written book which opens up a new perspective on the professions as well as contributing to existing debates."--David Podmore, "Times Higher Education Supplement"

"Must be judged as a landmark in medical sociology."--Norman Denzin, "Journal of Health and Social Behavior"
""Profession of Medicine" is a challenging monograph; the ideas presented are stimulating and thought provoking. . . . Given the expanding domain of what illness is and the contentions of physicians about their rights as professionals, Freidson wonders aloud whether expertise is becoming a mask for privilege and power. . . . "Profession of Medicine" is a landmark in the sociological analysis of the professions in modern society."--Ron Miller, "Sociological Quarterly"
"This is the first book that I know of to go to the root of the matter by laying open to view the fundamental nature of the professional claim, and the structure of professional institutions."--Everett C. Hughes, "Science"

"Medical Professionals and Their Work" conveys how medical people shape and organize the knowledge, perception, and experience of illness, as well as the substance of illness behavior, its management, and treatment. It is now well established that the unique symbolic equipment of the human animal is intimately connected with the functioning of the body. Freidson and Lorber believe that the proper understanding of specifically human rather than generally "animal" illness requires careful and systematic study of the social meanings surrounding illness.The content of social meanings varies from culture to culture and from one historical period to another. As important as the content of those social meanings, is the organization of groups who serve as carriers and, sometimes, creators. In the case of illness, a critical difference exists between those considered to be competent to diagnose and treat the sick and those excluded from this special privilege - a separation as old as the shaman or medicine-man. Such differences become solidified when the expert healer becomes a member of an organized, full-time occupation, sustained in monopoly over the work of diagnosis and treatment by the force of the state, and invested with the authority to make official designation of the social meanings to be ascribed to physical states.The medical profession in advanced nations is in a vise between professional needs and political demands. Its organization and its knowledge establish many of the conditions for being recognizably and legitimately ill, and the professional controls many of the circumstances of treatment. It thus plays a central role in shaping the experience of being ill. With this fact of modern life in mind, this collection on the character of experts or professionals in general and of medicine as a profession in particular is uniquely fashioned.