Sources of hope in chronic illness
Catherine Garrett
School of Applied Social and Human Sciences, University of Western Sydney, Parramatta Campus, NSW
PP: 99 - 107
Abstract
Chronic illness is a form of suffering from which cure is unlikely but healing is possible. This paper reflects on the emotion of 'hope' in the context of such illnesses. Using Arthur Frank's illness narrative types as a framework, it begins with sociological critiques of the discourse of hope in media stories about cancer ('false hopes'). It considers the contrast between stories of 'loss of self' and 'transcendence of self' in the sociological literature on chronic illness. It links hope with ethical action (living for others) and with embodied experiences of security and love.
Referring to a medieval account of hope in the midst of suffering (Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love), it demonstrates that the theistic strand in the history of western thought and experience remains important in the social construction of the contemporary self and in people's capacity to face adversity without despair.
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual conference of The Australian Sociological Association, Sydney University, 13-15 December 2001 and published in the conference proceedings on CD-ROM.
Hope is not merely an intrapsychic activity. It is the interplay of personal imaginative processes with the possibilities of one's historical situation, as these are made available and communicated through potent cultural symbols and social practices. (Barnard 1995: 54).
Keywords
hope, chronic illness, narrative, self, emotion, ethics, healing
References
Barbalet J (1998) Emotion, social theory and social structure, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barnard D (1995) Chronic illness and the dynamics of hoping. In Toombs SK, Barnard D and Carson RA (1995) Chronic illness: from experience to policy, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Charmaz K (1983) Loss of self: a fundamental form of suffering in the chronically ill, Sociology of Health and Illness 5(2): 168-95.
Charmaz K (1991) Good days, bad days: the self in chronic illness and in time, New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Frank A (1995) The wounded storyteller: body, illness and ethics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Garrett C (2001) Weal and woe: suffering, sociology and the emotions of Julian of Norwich, Pastoral Psychology 49(3): 187-203.
Goffman E (1982) The presentation of self in everyday life, London: Penguin.
Good M-J Del Vecchio, Good BJ, Schaffer C and Lind SE (1990) American oncology and the discourse on hope, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 14: 59-79.
Hahn R (1995) Sickness and healing: An anthropological perspective. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
van Hooft S (2000) The suffering body, Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine 4(2): 179-195.
Julian of Norwich (1998) Revelations of divine love (Trans. Spearing E), London: Penguin.
Kleinman A (1988) The illness narratives, New York: Basic Books.
Lifton R (1968) Death in life, New York: Random House.
Lupton D (1994) Medicine as culture: Illness, disease and the body in western societies, London: Sage.
Ricoeur P (1980) Essays on biblical interpretation, Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
Sontag S (1978) Illness as metaphor, Middlesex: Penguin.
Taylor C (1989) Sources of the self: The making of the modern identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
The Oxford English Dictionary
Unruh D (1983) Death and personal history: Strategies of identity preservation, Social Problems 30: 340-351.
Visser M (2000) The geometry of love: Space, time, mystery and meaning in an ordinary church, London: Viking Penguin.
Waddell C (1997) Magic and liturgical correctness in the Church: The story of a spiritual journey home, The Australian Journal of Liturgy 6(1): 5-21.
West G (1984) Death work: An adjunct to the hospice worker, family, and patient, Lecture, Gerontology Lecture Series, Sonoma State University, October 25.
Williams G (1993) Chronic illness and the pursuit of virtue in everyday life. In Radley A (ed) Worlds of illness: Biographical and cultural perspectives on health and disease, New York: Routledge.
eContent Home
