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  • Title: From a lived body to a medicalized body: diagnostic transformation and chronic fatigue syndrome.
    Author: Sachs L.
    Journal: Med Anthropol; 2001; 19(4):299-317. PubMed ID: 11800317.
    Abstract:
    This paper addresses the diagnostic dilemma posed by chronic illness that offers no demonstrable evidence of serious physical disorders or pathology. Is a diagnosis such as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) disabling because it encourages people to identify with it? Does it become a self-fulfilling prophecy? In providing people with a name, and thus allowing them to confirm the legitimacy of their suffering, a diagnosis of CFS may help them to relate to their world and, hence, facilitate their recovery. One of the most relevant questions pertaining to a diagnosis of CFS concerns how people deal with suffering when it does not come with a biomedically established pathology. I draw upon material provided by 21 men and women diagnosed with CFS. My analysis concerns the ambivalence involved in the diagnostic process and its implications for the relationship between self-identity and chronicity.
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