ABSTRACT
The aim of this study is to resume the category ‘preventivist dilemma’, coined by Sérgio Arouca in his doctoral thesis, written in 1975, to reflect on its updating. In his thesis, Arouca sought to understand how the rules of discursive formation of preventive medicine and relations with non-discursive instances were produced, studying the articulations with the capitalist mode of production. The analysis of these articulations enabled Arouca to evidence that preventive medicine did not escape the fundamental contradiction of medicine that transforms health - a use-value into exchange-value through medical care. Therefore, the research that is done by rescuing that category is directed to a specific question: how did the update of the discourse of preventive medicine for health promotion happened? The category coined by Arouca has made it possible to highlight that health promotion does not escape the fundamental contradiction of medicine, and, instead of being an innovation for the field of health, it is an update of the preventivist discourse, setting, thus, the promotionist dilemma.
KEYWORDS
Preventive medicine; Health promotion; Primary Health Care