Exploring the Symbolic Representations of Illness and AIDS

Emmanuel Nwankwo: Disease manifests itself for many reasons, this book is a masterful telling of how, one can receive and live through the effects of several, my heart pounded as I read and I even felt I had tB, powerful!

United States on Aug 03, 2023

maria: This book was disappointing considering the status of its author

United Kingdom on Jun 23, 2023

Ally Smith: Really good read, nice quality book too

United States on May 03, 2023

Lyndon Rudolph: Must read for anyone cancer or HIV has touched

United States on Aug 27, 2022

Anne: Sontag explains how, when faced with diseases we do not understand and for which we lack a real causal explanation, we are tempted to construct a myth which effectively places the blame on the person's pscyhe or personality. Once the real physical causes of a disease are understood, the stigma and the myth evaporate. She uses the case of TB to illustrate perfectly the myths of the TB personality that were created and evaporated once it was understood that TB was caused by the tubercolosis bacterium and cured by antibiotics. The upshot for patients today of such diseases is that they must resist the myths. Even today you will find alternative medicine practicioners blaming cancers on the repressed personality of the patient, rather than a virus or hormones over which the patient lacks complete control. Even saying that stress brings on the disease is really failing to provide an explanation and suggesting that the patient failed to control their stress. Ultimately these myths serve the people who construct them to maintain their false belief that they can avoid such diseases and that perfect health and perfect bodies are within their control. In other words, the mythology helps the...

Australia on Jul 29, 2021

evilturkey: Book itself is fine. However I got sent a book with a different cover than the one pictured.

United Kingdom on Nov 16, 2020

Carlos Lesmes: The book is in good shape and good quality overall.

Germany on Jan 04, 2020

Jack G Kleinman: An important concept is discussed in this book: the idea that diseases come with a set of what Sontag calls metaphors, but what I would term associations, that have little if any relevance to the true nature of the disease. I can think of many current examples of diseases that are freighted with non-medical associations. Addiction is one that comes to mind. Another is the “epidemic” of gun violence, which, like AIDS, is being blamed on a marginal group, the mentally ill. Other less politically fraught include obesity & chronic fatigue syndrome, which, like cancer as discussed in the book, have the metaphorical baggage of somehow being rooted in the character of the sufferer. We would, according to Sontag, be better off with a medical model for these conditions, so that appropriate knowledge about them can be sought & cures secured.

United States on Feb 18, 2018

Judith Miller: I found her premise that we tend to demonize illnesses we do not understand. I guess Ebola will be the next metaphor for evil.

Canada on Oct 03, 2014

Denise Bjorkman: The book did not have a glossary or an index at the back to identify concepts in the book and I believe this was unprofessional. The publishers should have sorted that out. Any reader of serious authors expects these niceties for easy reference. However as a scholar, follower and disciple of Sontag for a life time, I believe she has few peers. She cuts through the facades of life, finding the kernel of truth. She is worth reading again and again. Every student of philosophy and English should read everyone of Sontag's works. Each time I read her I find something I have missed - a nuance, deliberate ambituity and confrontation with our beguiling evasion of what is really happening in our society. I write this decades on from her first publication and obervation of 'life' and yet I notice it could be a rendition of modern life.

United States on Apr 04, 2013