Jasna strona medykalizacji życia pacjentów onkologicznych

“Cancer. Anthropological study of practice and narration” by Hubert Wierciński is a work in the field of medical anthropology, a discipline gaining recent popularity in Poland. Author interviewed 44 people at selected medical facilities and among oncological patient’s organizations members. Using tools developed in so called “narrative paradigm” which has been founded in the 80’s of XX century, he describes world of people suffering from cancer. Wierciński challenges the idea that the life medicalization process is unambiguously harmful for the patients – a view developed by critical theory. According to authors notion, modern medicine helps patients organizing their experience and delivers useful language for its description. Gathering data supporting this view is certainly an important achievement. Other one is drawing attention on patient’s organizations importance for regaining psychological well-being process. The major drawback of Wierciński work is ambiguous metaphor according to which “narration is a medicine”. It can be understood in two ways: 1) having language which organizes experience of illness can improve chances for survival for cancer patients, 2) describing painful experiences can contribute in regaining psychological well-being. However, neither oncology nor psychology cannot support either of those theses. Description of the world of cancer patients focuses on aspects which are left unsaid, however analytical category of “tabu” wasn’t sufficiently conceptualized and operationalized. For this reason, part of work which focuses on poorly known aspects of illness, has purely descriptive value. Goals which were set by author were only partially achieved.