“Precipitation,” Extreme Experience, “Switch,” and “Resource”: A Disease from the Biographical Perspective

Abstract

The paper addresses the results of the empirical study devoted to the reconstruction of ways involving experience of diseases in the whole individual’s biography by people who do not consider themselves as seriously ill. Oral history interviews with the inhabitants of the West-Pomeranian region in Poland served as a source of the data. These interviews were subjected to secondary analysis.

Inductively generated categories, such as “mere illness,” “precipitation,” “extreme experience,” and “shocking experience” reveal complex meanings associated with diseases. The category of “switch” shows the ways in which disease is perceived as affecting human life, while the category of “resource” indicates how people “used” their diseases in their activity.