ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describes one clinical encounter, a case report in the published anthropological literature, and a second clinical encounter. He also describes a conflict between an illness narrative and the diagnosis narrative highlighting the failure of the healing ritual when an illness narrative asserts priority. In the following vignette, the illness narrative disrupts the healing ritual by preventing the doctor in proclaiming a diagnosis. When the healing ritual fails, patients are vocal about telling their illness narratives. The failures are the "marked" category and are simply easier to find and record. The patient is a 54-year-old woman with scoliosis and multiple urologic surgeries. The patient is "self-diagnosing" with some regularity. Dr. Jeffries described the patient to the author as a real problem and said, "The patient came for a second opinion after being treated at State University for many years.
