Constructing Existential Uncertainty in the Cancer Context: A Deductive Thematic Analysis

Abstract

Notwithstanding ever-increasing reservoirs of scientific knowledge, uncertainty is a fundamental part of human existence that will never be eliminated. This paper focuses on the concept of existential uncertainty by exploring how people living with cancer construct their sense of the unknown. We interviewed six people who had received a cancer diagnosis in the last five years on the subject of their uncertainty, inviting them to talk about objects that were related to this uncertainty and to answer questions about their experience of uncertainty. A deductive thematic analysis of the interviews generated commonalities in the way they expressed the existential aspect of their uncertainty, namely: a struggle to put it into words; a resort to metaphorical modes of expression; and a sense that the process of doing so was somehow “weird.” We suggest that it is difficult for people to express their existential uncertainty directly and in the conventional terms of a medico-scientific discourse, and that they resort to alternative discourses that are more amenable to metaphor to do so. It is important for clinicians offering psychological support to be aware that clients may express uncertainty in this way so they can deepen rather than thwart their meaning-making process.