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Abstract

In January 2000, I was diagnosed with cancer. This story tells of my relationships with the medical professionals who treated me. Like Arthur Frank, my goal was to receive the treatment I needed without sacrificing the humanity I valued. Being socialized by my father's self-destructive wolfish approach to authority, I struggle to overcome those tendencies with medical practitioners and to replace them with a more benign canine—the humor-laced, rule-violating, coyote/trickster of ancient mythology, a persona that challenges dehumanizing institutional structures but not always the people who uphold them. This then is a tale of my emerging trickster as I negotiate my treatment options as a cancer patient.

Keywords

cancer trickster doctor/patient play hierarchy

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References

Frank, A.W. (1991). At the will of the body: Reflections on illness . New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Hyde, L. (1998). Trickster makes this world: Mischief, myth, and art. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Jung, C.G. (1973). Four archetypes: Mother/rebirth/spirit/trickster (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). Princeton, NJ: Bollengen Series XX/Princeton University Press. (Originally published 1959)

Jung, C.G. (1965). Memories, dreams, reflections (R. Winston & C. Winston, Trans.). New York: Vintage Books.

Radin, P. (1956). The trickster: A study in American Indian mythology . New York: Bell Publishing.

Shelley, M. (1991). Frankenstein. New York: Bantam Books. (Originally published 1818)

Festum Asinorum

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