Search results for "Medicine in Literature"
showing 4 items of 4 documents
Rewinding Frankenstein and the body-machine: organ transplantation in the dystopian young adult fiction seriesUnwind
2016
While the separation of body and mind (and the entailing metaphor of the body as a machine) has been a cornerstone of Western medicine for a long time, reactions to organ transplantation among others challenge this clear-cut dichotomy. The limits of the machine-body have been negotiated in science fiction, most canonically in Mary Shelley9s Frankenstein (1818). Since then, Frankenstein9s monster itself has become a motif that permeates both medical and fictional discourses. Neal Shusterman9s contemporary dystology for young adults, Unwind , draws on traditional concepts of the machine-body and the Frankenstein myth. This article follows one of the young protagonists in the series, who is en…
Migration, Identity, and Threatened Mental Health: Examples from Contemporary Fiction.
2018
In 2015, the world saw 244 million international migrants. Migration has been shown to be both a protective and a risk factor for mental health, depending on circumstances. Furthermore, culture has an impact on perceptions and constructions of mental illness and identity, both of which can be challenged through migration. Using a qualitative research approach, we analysed five internationally acclaimed and influential novels and one theatre play that focus on aspects of identity, migration, and threatened mental health. As a mirror of society, fiction can help to understand perceptions of identity and mental suffering on an intrapsychic and societal level, while at the same time society its…
To Be Continued: Serial Narration, Chronic Disease, and Disability.
2019
This article explores the representation of Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease in the television series The Good Wife and The Michael J. Fox Show. We suggest that serial narration offers intriguing ways to rethink the function and meaning of narratives in health contexts, and that the episodic narrative form of television series may afford insights into the structure of medical encounters. Specifically, we examine to what extent serial narration, with its focus on continuity and repetition, might help reimagine the typical narrative of decline, which is implicit in the terminology of neurodegeneration, as well as the narrative of (premature) closure or finitude that often accompanies a di…
Hell on earth: Textual reflections on the experience of mental illness
2012
Background: Some people who by themselves or by others are understood as having mental health problems have written autobiographies about their experiences. Aims: The aim of this study is to explore how people write about their experiences of being mentally ill. Method: Twelve Scandinavian autobiographies were studied using content analysis based on phenomenology and hermeneutics. Results: Three themes were identified: feeling like a stranger in life and places, the transformation of life experiences into questions of disease and feeling ashamed. Conclusions: People’s experiences of being mentally ill might be understood as the result of medical constructions unsuitable for the persons them…