From Trump to Winnie the Pooh: how we use diagnosis as a narrative tool to make sense of dysfunction and deviance

Being diagnosed with COVID makes sense of symptoms, determines what we should do about them, and shapes our collective responsibility to the community.

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The ConversationThe Conversation
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https://theconversation.com/from-trump-to-winnie-the-pooh-how-we-use-diagnosis-as-a-narrative-tool-to-make-sense-of-dysfunction-and-deviance-174056https://theconversation.com/from-trump-to-winnie-the-pooh-how-we-use-diagnosis-as-a-narrative-tool-to-make-sense-of-dysfunction-and-deviance-174056
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Monday, April 17, 2023
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Infection, Psychosis, Depression, AC 25.1309-1, Friends, Differential diagnoses of anorexia nervosa, Tigger, Politics, Whodunit, Policy, Pathology, ADHD, Diagnosis, COVID, Omicron, Psychopathy, Temporal lobe epilepsy, Alpha, Delta, Spectrum, Chronic fatigue syndrome, Tic disorder, Narcissism, Schizophrenia, Facial nerve paralysis, Fibromyalgia, Winnie-the-Pooh, Bacteria, House, Character, Bipolar disorder, Personality disorder, Disease, Medical imaging, Nursing, Dietary supplement, Vaccine, Entertainment, Medical device
Summary
Key Points: 
  • Being diagnosed with COVID makes sense of symptoms, determines what we should do about them, and shapes our collective responsibility to the community.
  • You have symptoms, the doctor examines or tests you, you get a name for what ails you.
  • Even a diagnosis as seemingly clear-cut as COVID is more than just a label stuck to a virus.
  • Read more:
    COVID testing led to new techniques of disease diagnosis: progress mustn’t stop now

Diagnosis as storytelling

    • Diagnosis is so important to understanding our lives and those around us that it’s often applied outside of the health setting.
    • TV shows such as House use diagnostic mysteries to underpin plots – less Whodunit and more Whatisit.
    • A diagnosis is a story, in and of itself.
    • You have an infection of your lungs, probably caused by bacteria or a virus and possibly triggered by that cold you had last week.

Stories and deviance

    • Diagnostic stories are explanations of deviance.
    • By “deviance” we mean the sociological sense of the term: an inability to meet social expectations of behaviour, belief or experience.
    • To explain deviance, we often defer to diagnosis.
    • More than 150 scientific authors have thrown themselves at finding a diagnosis to explain his deviance.

Medicalising experiences

    • These stories say more about us, the diagnosers, and our contemporary views, than the lives of those they seek to describe.
    • By using diagnosis to explain people, we medicalise our experience of the world and shut down other avenues of explanation.
    • Just as explaining an imaginary character via diagnosis means we’ve lost faith in stories.
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