I have always been a little confused by Susan Sontag's famous Illness as Metaphor. On the one hand I think she is absolutely right about the way the romantic view of illness was carried over into modern medicine. This is seen most clearly on the lunatic fringe, in the work of Wilhelm Reich and various forms of psychotherapy, but it pervades the whole system. On the other hand, is there anything that is not metaphor? Metaphor is the clockwork of consciousness; the machinery that makes it work. So illness is inevitably metaphorical and not to view it as a part of an individual's social and psychological world is missing an important piece of the jigsaw.
I used to think this point of view absurd. A person suffers from malaria, cholera, cancer and so on, and that is that. There is a treatment, perhaps a cure, a procedure to go through that has absolutely nothing to do with the books the patient reads, the music he listens to, the clothes she wears, the thoughts they think, the dreams they dream.
Now I am not so sure, things seem much more complicated and tangled than they once appeared.
I remembered Illness as Metaphor the other night as I lay awake coughing. I also remembered the way my father died of a persistent chest infection, an illness both horribly real and horribly fabricated by time.
It was clear that the severity of my cold was as much to do with my disappointment at not going to Cambodia as the virus or bacteria that caused me to cough. My cold could have well been a rash, a migraine headache, toothache or worse. That is to say it was in part metaphorical. Furthermore, I have come to believe that if illness did not come to metaphor then inevitably metaphor would come to illness. Simply because there is no other way of thinking about it.
My cold has almost gone now
- and with it the state of being enclosed within the metaphor - and I am left contemplating the long grim and lonely year that lies ahead of me and time outside rattling the windows and blowing the few remaining leaves off the rowan tree.
If I had the courage I would pack my rucksack, take a can of petrol and set fire to my house and all that is in it, then set off to start a new life taking only what is most valuable and most comforting that can still be found among the warm ashes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illness_as_Metaphor
I used to think this point of view absurd. A person suffers from malaria, cholera, cancer and so on, and that is that. There is a treatment, perhaps a cure, a procedure to go through that has absolutely nothing to do with the books the patient reads, the music he listens to, the clothes she wears, the thoughts they think, the dreams they dream.
Now I am not so sure, things seem much more complicated and tangled than they once appeared.
I remembered Illness as Metaphor the other night as I lay awake coughing. I also remembered the way my father died of a persistent chest infection, an illness both horribly real and horribly fabricated by time.
It was clear that the severity of my cold was as much to do with my disappointment at not going to Cambodia as the virus or bacteria that caused me to cough. My cold could have well been a rash, a migraine headache, toothache or worse. That is to say it was in part metaphorical. Furthermore, I have come to believe that if illness did not come to metaphor then inevitably metaphor would come to illness. Simply because there is no other way of thinking about it.
My cold has almost gone now
- and with it the state of being enclosed within the metaphor - and I am left contemplating the long grim and lonely year that lies ahead of me and time outside rattling the windows and blowing the few remaining leaves off the rowan tree.
If I had the courage I would pack my rucksack, take a can of petrol and set fire to my house and all that is in it, then set off to start a new life taking only what is most valuable and most comforting that can still be found among the warm ashes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illness_as_Metaphor