Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors
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Narrated by:
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Tavia Gilbert
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By:
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Susan Sontag
About this listen
In 1978 Susan Sontag wrote Illness as Metaphor, a classic work described by Newsweek as “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 to Illness as Metaphor, extending the argument of the earlier book to the AIDS pandemic.These two essays now published together, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS 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.
©2013 Susan Sontag (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 and the culmination of a life's work, The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker's brilliant and impassioned answer to the "why" of human existence. In bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles the problem of the vital lie: man's refusal to acknowledge his own mortality. In doing so, he sheds new light on the nature of humanity and issues a call to life and its living that still resonates more than 30 years after its writing.
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Not for the closed-minded
- By Yhatze on 05-27-17
By: Ernest Becker
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Stay
- A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It
- By: Jennifer Michael Hecht
- Narrated by: Jennifer Michael Hecht
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Worldwide, more people die by suicide than by murder, and many more are left behind to grieve. Despite distressing statistics that show suicide rates rising, the subject, long a taboo, is infrequently talked about. In this sweeping intellectual and cultural history, poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht channels her grief for two friends lost to suicide into a search for history’s most persuasive arguments against the irretrievable act, arguments she hopes to bring back into public consciousness.
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Informative but oddly dispassionate
- By Scott on 01-07-14
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The Worm at the Core
- On the Role of Death in Life
- By: Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, Tom Pyszczynski
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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More than 100 years ago, the American philosopher William James wrote that the knowledge that we must die is "the worm at the core" of the human condition - a universally shared fear that informs all our thoughts and actions, from the great art we create to the devastating wars we wage.
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Skeptical at first, but they won me over.
- By Tory Giddens on 06-07-20
By: Jeff Greenberg, and others
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One Nation Under Therapy
- How the Helping Culture is Eroding Self-Reliance
- By: Christina Hoff Sommers, Sally Satel
- Narrated by: Dianna Dorman
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Americans have traditionally placed great value on self-reliance and fortitude. Recent decades, however, have seen the rise of a therapeutic ethic that views Americans as emotionally underdeveloped, requiring the ministrations of mental-health professionals to cope with life's vicissitudes. Today, having a book for every ailment, a counselor for every crisis, a lawsuit for every grievance, and a TV show for every problem degrades one's native ability to cope with life's challenges.
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If you want another perspective
- By Kurt on 03-07-09
By: Christina Hoff Sommers, and others
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Suspicious Minds
- How Culture Shapes Madness
- By: Joel Gold, Ian Gold
- Narrated by: Joel Gold, Ian Gold
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Mr. A. was admitted to Dr. Joel Gold’s inpatient unit at Bellevue Hospital in 2002. He was, he said, being filmed constantly, and his life was being broadcast around the world "like The Truman Show" - the 1998 film depicting a man who is unknowingly living out his life as the star of a popular soap opera. Over the next few years, Gold saw a number of patients suffering from what he and his brother, Dr. Ian Gold, began calling the "Truman Show Delusion," launching them on a quest to understand the nature of this particular phenomenon and the nature of madness itself.
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Intriguing
- By L. K. on 04-18-16
By: Joel Gold, and others
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Get Well Soon
- History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them
- By: Jennifer Wright
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1518, in a small town in Alsace, Frau Troffea began dancing and didn't stop. She danced until she was carried away six days later, and soon 34 more villagers joined her. Then more. In a month more than 400 people had been stricken by the mysterious dancing plague. In late-19th-century England an eccentric gentleman founded the No Nose Club in his gracious townhome - a social club for those who had lost their noses, and other body parts, to the plague of syphilis for which there was then no cure.
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Didn't know syphilis could be so fascinating.
- By Kindle Customer on 02-09-17
By: Jennifer Wright
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The Undying
- Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care
- By: Anne Boyer
- Narrated by: Amy Finegan
- Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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A week after her 41st birthday, the acclaimed poet Anne Boyer was diagnosed with highly aggressive triple-negative breast cancer. For a single mother living paycheck to paycheck who had always been the caregiver, the catastrophic illness was both a crisis and an initiation into new ideas about mortality and the gendered politics of illness. The Undying explores the experience of illness as mediated by digital screens, weaving in ancient Roman dream diarists, cancer hoaxers and fetishists, cancer vloggers, pro-pain "dolorists", and the many little murders of capitalism.
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Provocative and moving
- By C. FREEMAN on 05-13-20
By: Anne Boyer
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Saving Normal
- An Insider’s Revolt Against out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life
- By: Allen Frances MD
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In Saving Normal, Allen Frances, one of the world's most influential psychiatrists, warns that mislabeling everyday problems as mental illness has shocking implications for individuals and society: Stigmatizing a healthy person as mentally ill leads to unnecessary, harmful medications, the narrowing of horizons, misallocation of medical resources, and draining of the budgets of families and the nation.
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Right on the money
- By Mentecuerpo on 03-29-19
By: Allen Frances MD
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Doing Harm
- By: Maya Dusenbery
- Narrated by: Dara Rosenberg
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Editor of the award-winning site Feministing.com, Maya Dusenbery brings together scientific and sociological research, interviews with experts within and outside the medical establishment, and personal stories from women across the country to provide the first comprehensive, accessible look at how sexism in medicine harms women today.
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One of the most important books ever written
- By Dresden on 03-18-18
By: Maya Dusenbery
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The Myth of Mental Illness
- Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct
- By: Thomas S. Szasz MD
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Thomas Szasz's classic book revolutionized thinking about the nature of the psychiatric profession and the moral implications of its practices. By diagnosing unwanted behavior as mental illness, psychiatrists, Szasz argues, absolve individuals of responsibility for their actions and instead blame their alleged illness. He also critiques Freudian psychology as a pseudoscience and warns against the dangerous overreach of psychiatry into all aspects of modern life.
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Good format for initial exposure to the material.
- By Anonymous User on 11-29-21
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Plagues, Pandemics and Viruses
- From the Plague of Athens to COVID-19
- By: Heather E. Quinlan
- Narrated by: Samara Naeymi
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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It can come in waves - like tidal waves. It changes societies. It disrupts life. It ends lives. As far back as 3000 B.C.E. (the Bronze Age), plagues have stricken mankind. COVID-19 is just the latest example, but history shows that life continues. It shows that knowledge and social cooperation can save lives. Viruses are neither alive nor dead and are the closest thing we have to zombies. Their only known function is to replicate themselves, which can have devastating consequences on their hosts.
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Somewhat elemental
- By Bertha Watkins on 10-23-21
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What listeners say about Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Vince
- 08-25-22
An essential work from an essential thinker
The power we give to our diseases, and how that power is redistributed to our institutions, should be on the forefront of everyone's mind after a deeply polarizing pandemic experience in the modern day. The doomsday feelings Sontag expresses in the 80s surrounding the AIDS epidemic & nuclear war, are felt even more intensely 40 years later.
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- andrew
- 09-07-18
fantastic
This should be mandatory reading for anyone in the healthcare industry and anyone who could ever get sick.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Mary
- 03-29-21
Excellent Book!
The author did a great job of thoroughly explaining some of the metaphoric roots of stigma around the world’s major disease epidemics. It also is very much applicable to the current climate with the pandemic and the racial, classist, and ableist implications of disease stigma.
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