some texts
From Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors by Susan Sontag:
Illness expands by means of two hypotheses. The first is that every form of social deviation can be considered an illness. Thus, if criminal behavior can be considered an illness, then criminals are not to be condemned or punished but to be understood…treated, cured. The second is that every illness can be considered psychologically. Illness is interpreted as, basically, a psychological event, and people are encouraged to believe that they get sick because they (unconsciously) want to, and that they can cure themselves by the mobilization of will; that they can choose not to die of the disease. These two hypotheses are complementary. As the first seems to relieve guilt, the second reinstates it. Psychological theories of illness are a powerful means of placing the blame on the ill. Patients who are instructed that they have, unwittingly, caused their disease are also being made to feel that they have deserved it. 56-57
Today, I was told that my stress is making my body feel the way it does. my stress is being used to explain my painful wrists, hands, elbows, and feet. my headaches. my anxiety and depression. my fatigue.
this means that it is up to me to make my body well; it is my duty, and mine alone, to cure my diseased self. i must not be stressed! it doesn’t matter that i am in grad school and working and whatever - “is it really that important to you to be in school right now? is grad school worth it?” i am told.
i am made to question my body. is all this just because of stress? am i really my own worst enemy? am i holding my body back from functioning properly? however, i have to be critical. how, then, can my symptoms during the onset of disease - when i was under a great amount of stress - be explained? were they, too, just symptoms of stress? Am i willing this on myself now? or was i also willing it on myself then?
Or, does autoimmune disease occur because i don’t know myself? do i really not know who my real foe is?
Emily Martin in her book Flexible Bodies: Tracking Immunity in American Culture - From the Days of Polio to the Age of AIDS discusses the importance of the military metaphor in talking about the immune system and its functions. She describes, quoting a tv show, how autoimmune diseases are commonly described as the point when “we have met the enemy and the enemy is us (62).” She also quotes the psychologist Andrew Feldmar as saying that autoimmunity “strikes people who in their childhood were inhibited from differentiating who is their enemy” (271). this is important here. childhood development of self and non-self become implicated in disease. the child that can’t overcome these important stages are the ones who will physically suffer later in life. and i am assuming that this is also their own fault.
I guess i really am my own worst enemy.
this is me.
