Doctor-Patient Communication In Justė Lastauskienė’s Book “DOCTOR, MAY I COME IN?”

The article is based on the method of the phenomenology of perception (Maurice Merleau – Ponty) that breaks down a person's preconceptions, rejects the subject-object opposition, and emphasizes the importance of sensory perception, the unconditional value of other person, the intersubjective dialogue relationship, and the subject's sociocultural and historical horizon. Justė Latauskienė’s book “Doctor, can I come in?”, published in Lithuania in 2025, opens up the historical, social, cultural, and economic contexts of doctor-patient relationships to the book’s target audience – both physicians and patients. Opening up of these contexts allows both doctors and patients to look critically at their own preconceptions and not to take them for granted: by taking a socio-cultural and historical perspective, doctors and patients become aware of the conditionality of preconceptions. This critical approach creates a space of dialogue between a doctor and a patient, which is the only space in which an encounter between these two subjects can take place. The book also makes use of other practices that establish a space of dialogue: politeness, the horizons of the life of the doctor and the patient, and subjectivity.