Doctor-Patient Relationship in Africa: Inaugural Doctoral Dissertation

Doctor-Patient Relationship in Africa is a landmark work by Filipe Dom Masquil, M.D., Ph.D. - a physician born in Mozambique, raised between two worlds, and trained at one of Europe's most prestigious medical schools. Originally written as a doctoral dissertation awarded Magna Cum Laude at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg in 1983, this book has lost none of its urgency.At its heart is a deceptively simple question: what does a doctor need to understand about a patient's inner world in order to truly heal them? In the African context, that question opens into a rich and largely unexplored territory - one shaped by traditional healers, ancestral belief, colonial legacy, and the psychological dimensions of illness that Western medicine has long underestimated.Drawing on his own childhood in Mozambique, his clinical training in Europe, and a wide range of cross-cultural research, Dr. Masquil builds a compelling case: that the failures of many health programs in Africa are not rooted in the "backwardness" of patients, but in the inability of doctors to listen across cultural difference. He finds a surprising bridge in Carl Rogers' client-centered therapy, whose principles mirror the ancient communicative wisdom of the traditional African healer.This is a book for physicians, medical students, global health professionals, and anyone who believes that medicine, at its best, is a deeply human encounter.