Living under a diagnostic description: navigating images, metaphors, and sounds of depression

Subjectivity - Tập 12 - Trang 171-191 - 2019
Mette Toft Rønberg1
1Department of Learning and Philosophy, Copenhagen, Denmark

Tóm tắt

In this article, I analyze three images of depression from fieldwork conducted in Denmark: Depression as a black dog, a jarring dark sound, and a broken brain. These images provide different stories of experiences of depression, as well as its causes and treatment. I explore how people use images, metaphors, and sounds in the process of “learning to live under the description” of depression (Martin in Bipolar expeditions: mania and depression in American culture, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2007). I argue that metaphors, images, and sounds play a significant part in transforming clinical depression diagnoses into images that create resonance to illness experiences and unique lives. In closing, I compare the three images, and discuss benefits and drawbacks of each. I suggest that cultural repertoires on depression provide a space for inventive play with a depression diagnosis, pointing to a creativity, selectivity, and variability in how people relate to a diagnosis in present-day diagnostic cultures.

Tài liệu tham khảo

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