The term ‘restitution narrative’ describes the hope we all have when illness or accidental impairment befalls us to be returned to a pre-morbid condition of health as soon as possible, and in modern Western society we expect the miracle of restitutions to be mediated by medical science. Medicine is still unable to cure a wide range of illness and disability. For these people the restitution narrative fails. This study attempts to create space between health and illness, the space of the failed patient, within which to explore the iatrogenic and disabling effects on bodies and minds living in a society that has come to expect not to suffer when illness or disability is incurable and chronic. Through the medium of a purpose built website, people who are chronically ill and disabled discussed the ‘wicked issues’ that make lives already challenged unnecessarily difficult. Application of the findings of research in psychobiology is applied to speculate whether health may be worsened by being a failed patient in a culture for which health has become the ultimate good. Ideas of social fuzziology are brought into play to help imagine ways in which the dualities of health and illness, normal and abnormal, are broken down and the normalizing ideologies of medicine resisted. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/189027 |
| Date | January 2003 |
| Creators | Alder, Suzanne Alvilda, University of Western Sydney, College of Social and Health Sciences, School of Applied Social and Human Sciences |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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