IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v30y1990i11p1173-1186.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Personal narratives, social careers and medical courses: Analysing life trajectories in autobiographies of people with multiple sclerosis

Author

Listed:
  • Robinson, Ian

Abstract

Personal accounts of illness have always proved difficult to analyse. Using the distinction between personal narratives of illness, social careers of sickness and physical courses of disease this paper argues that such narratives provide an important and complementary means of understanding changes in health status. In developing a broad typology of such narratives it is argued that they can be considered as thermatically organised life stories. Personal accounts of the lives of people with multiple sclerosis are subject to narrative analysis, and the value of such perspectives is stressed in giving access to the personal world of illness.

Suggested Citation

  • Robinson, Ian, 1990. "Personal narratives, social careers and medical courses: Analysing life trajectories in autobiographies of people with multiple sclerosis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 30(11), pages 1173-1186, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:30:y:1990:i:11:p:1173-1186
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(90)90257-S
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nakata, Cheryl & Sharp, Lisa K. & Spanjol, Jelena & Cui, Anna Shaojie & Izberk-Bilgin, Elif & Crawford, Stephanie Y. & Xiao, Yazhen, 2021. "Narrative arcs and shaping influences in long-term medication adherence," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 285(C).
    2. Crooks, Valorie A., 2007. "Exploring the altered daily geographies and lifeworlds of women living with fibromyalgia syndrome: A mixed-method approach," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(3), pages 577-588, February.
    3. Ville, Isabelle & Khlat, Myriam, 2007. "Meaning and coherence of self and health: An approach based on narratives of life events," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(4), pages 1001-1014, February.
    4. Gavin Daker-White & Caroline Sanders & Anne Rogers & Ivaylo Vassliev & Christian Blickem & Sudeh Cheraghi-Sohi, 2014. "A Constellation of Misfortune," SAGE Open, , vol. 4(4), pages 21582440145, November.
    5. Inge M Brokerhof & Jan Fekke Ybema & P Matthijs Bal, 2020. "Illness narratives and chronic patients’ sustainable employability: The impact of positive work stories," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(2), pages 1-17, February.
    6. Sanders, Caroline & Rogers, Anne & Gately, Claire & Kennedy, Anne, 2008. "Planning for end of life care within lay-led chronic illness self-management training: The significance of 'death awareness' and biographical context in participant accounts," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(4), pages 982-993, February.
    7. Davenport, Nancy H.M., 2011. "Medical residents' use of narrative templates in storytelling and diagnosis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(6), pages 873-881, September.
    8. Gately, Claire & Rogers, Anne & Sanders, Caroline, 2007. "Re-thinking the relationship between long-term condition self-management education and the utilisation of health services," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(5), pages 934-945, September.
    9. Helen Busby, 2000. "Writing about Health and Sickness: An Analysis of Contemporary Autobiographical Writing from the British Mass-Observation Archive," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 5(2), pages 11-22, September.
    10. Shubin, Sergei & Rapport, Frances & Seagrove, Anne, 2015. "Complex and dynamic times of being chronically ill: Beyond disease trajectories of patients with ulcerative colitis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 105-112.
    11. Stockl, Andrea, 2007. "Complex syndromes, ambivalent diagnosis, and existential uncertainty: The case of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE)," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(7), pages 1549-1559, October.
    12. Kendall, Elizabeth & Catalano, Tara & Kuipers, Pim & Posner, Natasha & Buys, Nicholas & Charker, Jill, 2007. "Recovery following stroke: The role of self-management education," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(3), pages 735-746, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:30:y:1990:i:11:p:1173-1186. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.