Abstract
Diagnosis is a profoundly social phenomenon which, while putatively identifying disease entities, also provides insights into how societies understand and explain health, illness and deviance. In this paper, we explore how diagnosis becomes part of popular culture through its use in many non-clinical settings. From historical diagnosis of long-deceased public personalities to media diagnoses of prominent politicians and even diagnostic analysis of fictitious characters, the diagnosis does meaningful social work, explaining diversity and legitimising deviance in the popular imagination. We discuss a range of diagnostic approaches from paleopathography to fictopathography, which all take place outside of the clinic. Through pathography, diagnosis creeps into widespread and everyday domains it has not occupied previously, performing medicalisation through popularisation. We describe how these pathographies capture, not the disorders of historical or fictitious figures, rather, the anxieties of a contemporary society, eager to explain deviance in ways that helps to make sense of the world, past, present and imaginary.
Highlights
Diagnosis is a profoundly social phenomenon which, while putatively identifying disease entities, provides insights into how societies understand and explain health, illness and deviance
We have decided to stick with pathography in its etymological sense of the writing of disease (Gr. -Pathos – disease; graphos, to write or writer) and expand and differentiate as required as we explore the various forms of which there are several
We will include a range of different kinds of non-clinical diagnostic forms, from the autopathography to paleopathography, psychopathography, and even fictopathography
Summary
Diagnosis is a profoundly social phenomenon which, while putatively identifying disease entities, provides insights into how societies understand and explain health, illness and deviance. These pathographies play an important role in contemporary culture, providing shape to the stories we tell, and shining a light on popular expectations of diagnosis. The seepage from the clinic of diagnostic language has been facilitated by mass communication on-line and in digital platforms where exploring medical symptoms and concepts – ‘doing diagnosis’ – has become a popular past-time and accepted form of entertainment.
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