The Father Communicating on Illness

Abstract

In the preceding chapters I showed how the fathers I interviewed constructed themselves as failed fathers, who were not able to take care of their children, juxtaposing these constructions with the stories of the ‘good father’, the one who loves his children, an image which they also positioned themselves outside. At the same time, and in contrast to these constructions, they also conceived of themselves as very close to their children, dreaming of a close and ‘normal’ family. All that is complemented with stories of hiding themselves and their illness before their children. The stories I analysed paint quite a dramatic picture of a father on the margins of life and his family, always outside of what is required of him, be it by himself or others. This (self-) exclusion is continued in and complemented by narratives concerning the illness itself. In this chapter I will begin the exploration of how illness is constructed in the narratives of the fathers I interviewed. Here I am less interested in the family members, but rather in the illness and its presence in the family.KeywordsMental IllnessAnorexia NervosaEpistemic ModalityNarrative ResearchUsual StoryThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.