Brody: Stories Of Sickness

One of the key ideas Brody introduces is how the ideas of sickness and respect go together. We know that sick people can lose the respect of others and can lose self-respect when disability keeps them performing their usual social duties like working and socializing. Think about that for a moment.

A healthy person has an accident/contracts a disease, and then has to be pushed around in a wheelchair, has to be fed and toileted, and so on, loses status as an adult, and, being treated like a baby, that person gets the 'respect' or lack of accorded to a 'dependent' or 'useless' person. Can happen, and does: we all know the story-- we see it in the media all the time. Such a person can lose self-respect to the point of comm

--cure is the abandonment of deviance and return to socially valued state

These two points can mean a lot of things. Here are some examples to provoke further discussion. If your reference class is how you feel or know yourself generally, then you can say, when you are sick, that you " are not yourself." Others can say that about you too, and if the deviation into abnormal-for-you is big enough, 'they' could isolate, quarantine, ostracize or even institutionalize you against your will. In any case, whatever 'normal' is, you're not it. This could mean that you begin to experience your body as an object; it could mean you no longer recognize body parts as yours; it could mean that you no longer take your existence as a whole person for granted and assume a state of mind that is dependent and egocentric--where all you care about is getting better. There is also a good side to a period of abnormality brought into a life by an episode of sickness. You may learn to accomodate the rebellion of your body against the progress of your life plan, and resign yourself to a different way of functioning thereby reducing the tension of the mind's will and body's recalcitrance. You "may come to listen more sympathetically to [your] body, to see it as a source of values that should play a role in how to live [your] life and not just carry out the wishes of other aspects of the self. (Brody, 29). In other words, sickness can be a way of beginning the healing of a life.

Some topics in this essay:
Parkinsonism Alzheimer's, Oliver Sacks--some, Brody49 Self-respect, Metaphor Brody, Magic Mountain, James Hillman, DIMENSIONS SICKNESS, WHAT'S STORY, Cancer Ward, NY MacMillan, life plan, sick role, literature propogates, sick person, stories sickness, one's life, life story, telling story, personal identity, life plans, able tell story, rational life plan, one's life plan, peer review network, concept sick role,