ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on many areas of sociological interest, each of which might have been subjected to analysis in its own right were it not for the naturalistic method that has guided this narration. It points out the influence of popular, commonsensical beliefs concerning health and illness on the family's reaction to the onset of the child's illness, on their attitudes toward his treatment and hospitalization. The chapter is concerned with the way in which the child and his family came to conceive of themselves as a result of the child's illness, his separation from the home, and his reincorporation into it as a handicapped person. It shows how the hospital loosened the child's affective ties with home. The chapter also shows how, most of all, it reacted with insensitivity and indifference to the parents' search for information, failing to give them an adequate understanding of the disease and its implications for the child's recovery and rehabilitation.
