ABSTRACT
The first part of this introductory chapter uses the writer’s own experience to show how the concept of illness differentiates itself from disease in medical practice. The need for clearer thinking is especially obvious in mental illness and also in contested diagnoses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (also known as ME or myalgic encephalomyelitis). The second part summarises the themes of subsequent chapters and outlines the book’s key theoretical perspectives. These include (1) phenomenology as a key to understanding illness experience; (2) Peirce’s theory of signs as a guide to the interpretation of symptoms; (3) cultural contexts as the basis for knowledge and common sense; (4) language, pictures and habits or practices (Bourdieu’s habitus), as powerful influences on concepts of illness and disease; and (5) systems ideas as an account of the ‘other life’ of illness (as of disease) that Georges Canguilhem describes. Together, these viewpoints will support the claim that illness is a distinctive experience whether interpreted as physical, psychosomatic or mental. Recovery is viewed as a process rather than an endpoint.
