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Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors

Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors
By Susan Sontag

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Product Description

In 1978 Susan Sontag wrote Illness as Metaphor, a classic work described by Newsweek as "one of the most liberating books of its time." A cancer patient herself when she was writing the book, Sontag shows how the metaphors and myths surrounding certain illnesses, especially cancer, add greatly to the suffering of patients and often inhibit them from seeking proper treatment. By demystifying the fantasies surrounding cancer, Sontag shows cancer for what it is--just a disease. Cancer, she argues, is not a curse, not a punishment, certainly not an embarrassment and, it is highly curable, if good treatment is followed. Almost a decade later, with the outbreak of a new, stigmatized disease replete with mystifications and punitive metaphors, Sontag wrote a sequel to Illness as Metaphor, extending the argument of the earlier book to the AIDS pandemic.These two essays now published together, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors, have been translated into many languages and continue to have an enormous influence on the thinking of medical professionals and, above all, on the lives of many thousands of patients and caregivers.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #86108 in Books
  • Published on: 2001-08-25
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 192 pages

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
"In Illness as Metaphor , Sontag argues that the myths and metaphors surrounding disease can kill by instilling shame and guilt in the sick, thus delaying them from seeking treatment," wrote PW. She sees, and discusses provocatively, a similar process at work in the case of AIDS.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor was the first to point out the accusatory side of the metaphors of empowerment that seek to enlist the patient's will to resist disease. It is largely as a result of her work that the how-to health books avoid the blame-ridden term 'cancer personality' and speak more soothingly of 'disease-producing lifestyles' . . . AIDS and Its Metaphors extends her critique of cancer metaphors to the metaphors of dread surrounding the AIDS virus. Taken together, the two essays are an exemplary demonstration of the power of the intellect in the face of the lethal metaphors of fear."--Michael Ignatieff, The New Republic

Review
"Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor was the first to point out the accusatory side of the metaphors of empowerment that seek to enlist the patient's will to resist disease. It is largely as a result of her work that the how-to health books avoid the blame-ridden term 'cancer personality' and speak more soothingly of 'disease-producing lifestyles' . . . AIDS and Its Metaphors extends her critique of cancer metaphors to the metaphors of dread surrounding the AIDS virus. Taken together, the two essays are an exemplary demonstration of the power of the intellect in the face of the lethal metaphors of fear."--Michael Ignatieff, The New Republic

Customer Reviews

Correct on metaphor; incorrect on mind-body link and HIV causation4
Sontag is spot-on in her analysis of metaphors of AIDS: the military metaphors, the latency metaphors, and the plague metaphors. Her observations are keen and insightful in this regard. It is troubling then, that she seems unwilling to follow her own analysis and that she dismisses "psychological" aspects of disease causation in favor of a purely materialist understanding. Does she not realise that the "de-interpretation" of illness metaphors is itself a psychological act that affects patients? How does she reconcile her dismissal of psychological states with the fact that her very own writings on illness and AIDS are themselves psychological and therapeutic?

Sontag forgets that metaphor itself is a social-psychological phenomenon. If she had kept this fact in mind, she might have arrived at the conclusion that the basic medical and scientific paradigm of AIDS is itself flawed and kept alive solely through metaphor. At many points, she appears to be on the cusp of piercing the HIV mythology, pointing out discrepancies and exposing flaws in the science. For example, she recognizes the use of the latency period as a way of holding people in a perpetual state of "just haven't gotten AIDS...yet". She observes that the "AIDS tests" test for antibody, not virus, and that objectively healthy people are claimed to be ill based solely on infection (what would later be codified as "HIV disease".) She plainly points out the distinctions between "AIDS" in Africa vs. North America and Europe, and rightly discerns the racist motives behind an "African origin" of AIDS, yet she accepts the racist scientific wisdom (which has not been borne out in 20 years) that the African situation is the "true" AIDS situation and that North American and European AIDS will explode into the heterosexual population.

It's too bad she wasn't willing to follow through on her train of thought. That a thinker of her intellectual acumen was able to come so close to grasping the essence of the HIV mythology, and then, at the last minute, get derailed and capitulate to conventional wisdom, is a testament to the enormous power of group-fantasy.

Poor Susan2
Susan Sontag disparaged the idea that dis-eases are caused by mental states, and her resolutely taking this position illustrates the great and willing blindness of this talented but dis-eased anti-white racist. She had such a beautiful basket of blossoms to offer, and between their leaves and stems crawled poisonous snakes she could not free herself of because she wasn't willing to look in her own basket. Unfortunately her work is forever tainted with her hatred. Sad -

this book misses the point2
i think Susan Sontag is missing the political nature of illness. as far as i'm concerned there is a culture of blaming the victim in our society that is not limited to medicine. the victim is blamed because the victim has little power. the ill person is blamed because the tobacco companies are powerful, the oil companies are powerful, the sugar companies are powerful, the retail chains are powerful, the manufacturers are powerful, the health insurance companies are powerful and the governments are powerful. they have armies of lawyers to defend them; they have armies of doctors, scientists, and psychiatrists to fabricate pseudo-scientific evidence to support their self interest, but the victim is powerless to defend themselves against blame. this isn't about language, it's about politics of money and power. language is only one of the tools that the powerful use to blame the ill, and victims more generally.