The tension between overt talk and covert emotions in illness narratives: transition from clinician to researcher

In this article I discuss my interview experiences as joint constructions with Finnish parents whose children had been diagnosed with cancer. In doing so both the interviewer and interviewees became engaged as anxious "defended subjects" in an intersubjectivity of acknowledging but unable to talk of "how it really is" to have a child diagnosed with cancer. This appeared as tensions between overt talk and covert emotions. In the overt talk the parents underlined the manageable aspects of the illness. The speechless and painful part of the illness experience appeared as covert emotions that the interviewer was able to recognise and contain. Only when both the overt talk and the covert emotions were taken into account did it open up a more comprehensive way to understand the depth of the illness suffering. This is illustrated with one interview as an example.