This article explores select writings of seven authors who have examined the experience of serious illness, the meaning of it, and how individuals create or discover that meaning. These authors have been seminal thinkers in the field, and their works have influenced current thinking about illness and meaning. This article explores six major themes from select works of these authors: (a) postmodernism, culture, and illness; (b) embodied knowledge and the sick person; (c) illness narratives and their moral function; (d) key relationships for the sick person; (e) illness and death; and (f) the meaning of being ill. Apart from these, areas for future exploration are included.
Becker, G. ( 1997). Disrupted lives: How people create meaning in a chaotic world. Berkeley: University of California Press.
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Broyard, A. ( 1992). Intoxicated by my illness: And other writings on life and death. New York: Fawcett Columbine .
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Campbell, J. ( 1972). The hero with a thousand faces. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1949)
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Capra, F. ( 1982). The turning point: Science, society, and the rising culture . New York: Bantam Books.
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Dickinson, E. ( 1973). Because I could not stop for death (Poem 712). In C. Brooks, R. W. B. Lewis, & R. P. Warren (Eds.), American literature: The makers and the making (Vol. 2, p. 1250). New York: St. Martin’s Press. (Original work published 1863)
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Frank, A.W. ( 1991). At the will of the body: Reflections on illness. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
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Frank, A.W. ( 1995). The wounded storyteller: Body, illness, and ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Kleinman, A. ( 1988). The illness narratives: Suffering, healing, and the human condition. New York: Basic Books .
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Matsuyama, R.K. ( 2004). Physicians’ experiences with patients’ deaths: Meaning and connection. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses , 65(09), 4839B. (UMI No. 3148894)
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Morris, D.B. ( 1998). Illness and culture in the postmodern age. Berkeley: University of California Press.
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Nietzsche, F. ( 1967). On the genealogy of morals. In On the genealogy of morals and ecce homo (W. Kauffmann & R. J. Hollingdale, Trans , pp. 13-163). New York: Random House. (Original work published 1887)
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Selye, H. ( 1976). The stress of life (Rev. ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
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Sontag, S. ( 1977). Illness as metaphor. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
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Sontag, S. ( 1990). Illness as metaphor and AIDS and its metaphors. New York: Picador.
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Suter, S. ( 1986). Health psychophysiology: Mind-body interactions in wellness and illness. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
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Tolstoy, L. ( 1960). The death of Ivan Ilych and other stories (A. Maude & J. D. Duff, Trans.). New York: Signet. (Original work published 1886)
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Zaner, R.M. ( 2004). Conversations on the edge: Narratives of ethics and illness . Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
