[Restoring the complexity of reality in theoretical health promotion approaches through incorporating the identity of the subject].

The theoretical frameworks presently dominating health promotion practices mainly focus on the individual's psychosocial and cognitive components. When focusing on environments, these frameworks barely relate contextual elements to the individuals who give them a real existence. Because of the disjunction and reduction they create, the main theoretical readings only partially recognize the complexity of social life and therefore lose the Subject. Lacking theoretical reliance, these readings fail to meet the Ottawa Charter principles. Based on critical analysis of the main theoretical frameworks, we discuss the influence of disciplinary backgrounds on our modes of knowledge, tackling how epidemiological and behavioral thinking affect how we understand, conceive and problematize the objects in these fields. Based on this analysis, we illustrate how these epistemologies oversimplify social realities related to health. In order to encounter the lost subject of health promotion and thereby achieve Ottawa Charter's principles, we propose an innovative theoretical approach based on Schütz' socio-phenomenological thinking and Morin's complexity paradigm. Our theoretical proposal aims to recognize and reconcile significant aspects of individuals' meaningful life experiences, while integrating common sense principles. By transiting through the subject's identity, this theoretical proposal tends to unify all meaningful aspects that subtend social life at the subject's scale.