Social Visions and Social Control: The Evolution of Medical Thought in Postwar Hungary

Abstract

After nearly two decades of rigid adherence to the Soviet model of social and economic development, Hungary initiated a series of reforms in the 1960s that emphasize decentralization and market economic mechanisms. Internal repression and surveillance have diminished concurrently. Shaped by these broader social trends, three explanations of disease causation have successively emerged in Hungary since World War II: social medicine, a lifestyle model, and a psychosocial model. Although each model attempts to offer the best explanation for prevailing patterns of morbidity and mortality, each also reflects an underlying world view and the political priorities that derive from it. Social medicine and the lifestyle model have served largely to consolidate the power of ruling elites. The psychosocial model, on the other hand, has the potential to challenge the social order. The current popularity of the lifestyle model seems rooted in a widespread cynicism about social change which in turn is a product of contemporary social conditions in Hungary.