How Asthma Becomes a Part of Self: Illness and Treatment Narratives Based on Patients with Chronic Diseases

¹ Anthropology, School of Social Development and Public Policy, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
² Department of social work, School of Social Development and Public Policy, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

^* Corresponding author: 19210730022@fudan.edu.cn

Abstract

Increasing people turn the sufferings of illness into human “errors” and resort to medical science and technology for remedy instead of making meaningful moral responses to illness. This is not completely effective, and it will let them fall into the dilemma of humanitarian spirit. It is necessary to pay attention to the patient’s subjective world from the perspective of illness narratives. Based on the process of patient’s disease view, the writers explored the mutual influence of disease and the subject. In light with the life course of a patient with chronic disease and the daily experience, the writers started from three aspects: the social environment of disease, the social and cultural significance of disease pain and the process of interaction between patients and asthma, in order to reveal the social and cultural characteristics of chronic disease and how the disease becomes a part of their lives. Disease is interpreted as a kind of narrative reconstruction. By connecting different aspects of life, patients can repair the fracture among their bodies, themselves and the world. It is a kind of subjective treatment that patients give meaning to their personal experience in their own way, and then understand themselves and construct new identities and life scenes.