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Expressive metaphors in cancer narratives
1Division of Health and Caring Sciences, Institute of Nursing, University of Göteborg, Sweden. carola.skott@telia.com
Cancer Nursing
|June 1, 2002
Summary
Patients undergoing cancer treatment use metaphors to describe their experiences, reflecting bodily sensations and social contexts. These narratives help them cope with uncertainty, fear, and isolation, ultimately strengthening their identity.
Area of Science:
- Medical Sociology
- Health Communication
- Narrative Medicine
Background:
- Cancer patients' experiences are often shaped by uncertainty and the need to make sense of complex physiological processes.
- Metaphors are commonly used to articulate the lived experience of cancer and its treatment.
Purpose of the Study:
- To interpret illness narratives from cancer patients.
- To discuss the meaning and function of cancer metaphors in relation to bodily, social, and cultural experiences.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of illness narratives provided by patients undergoing cancer treatment.
- Interpretation of metaphors focusing on their connection to bodily experience and socio-cultural contexts.
Main Results:
- Widespread and persistent metaphors, like cancer "eating," evolve with contemporary scientific and lay understandings.
- Newly created metaphors express profound fears of self-loss and death, alongside ambivalent hope regarding treatment and care.
- Narrative communication provides access to the patient's experience of a painful physiological process, leading to "forced embodiment" of sickness.
Conclusions:
- Metaphor creation is an imaginative process using available concepts to articulate threatening experiences.
- Articulating experiences through narrative communication helps patients overcome solitude, find consolation, and strengthen their identity.
- Listening to patients' narratives is crucial for understanding their subjective experience of cancer and supporting their identity reconstruction.