Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors [Paperback]

In 1978 Susan Sontag wroteIllness as Metaphor, a classic work described byNewsweekas one of the most liberating books of its time. A cancer patient herself when she was writing the book, Sontag shows how the metaphors and myths surrounding certain illnesses, especially cancer, add greatly to the suffering of patients and often inhibit them from seeking proper treatment. By demystifying the fantasies surrounding cancer, Sontag shows cancer for what it is--just a disease. Cancer, she argues, is not a curse, not a punishment, certainly not an embarrassment and, it is highly curable, if good treatment is followed.

Almost a decade later, with the outbreak of a new, stigmatized disease replete with mystifications and punitive metaphors, Sontag wrote a sequel toIllnessas Metaphor, extending the argument of the earlier book to the AIDS pandemic.

These two essays now published together,Illnessas MetaphorandAIDS and Its Metaphors, have been translated into many languages and continue to have an enormous influence on the thinking of medical professionals and, above all, on the lives of many thousands of patients and caregivers.

Susan Sontag'sIllness as Metaphorwas the first to point out the accusatory side of the metaphors of empowerment that seek to enlist the patient's will to resist disease. It is largely as a result of her work that the how-to health books avoid the blame-ridden term 'cancer personality' and speak more soothingly of 'disease-producing lifestyles' . . .AIDS and Its Metaphorsextends her critique of cancer metaphors to the metaphors of dread surrounding the AIDS virus. Taken together, the two essays are an exemplary demonstration of the power of the intellect in the face of the lethal metaphors of fear. Michael Ignatieff, The New Republic

Susan Sontagis the author of four other novels,The Benefactor,Death Kit, andThe Volcano Lover; andlÓ*