ABSTRACT
Symptoms are sensations, perceptions, from our body – and in psychiatric contexts also strange experiences – that we interpret as uncomfortable, peculiar, weird, threatening or even unbearable. This chapter suggests when someone falls ill, meaning is closely connected to the experience of coherence, intelligibility, pattern recognition, and overall moral balance in the new situation. It proposes a way of looking at the notion of meaning as it relates to the situation when a person becomes ill. If the early symptoms are indicators of a chronic disabling disorder, the situation will be very different. It is clear that symptoms, under certain circumstances, may be a risky source of a new, powerful and even tempting life-meaning. The symptom is a clue to the existence of disease, but not the disease itself. To put it another way, a bodily perception becomes a symptom through a certain kind of interpretation.
