“The Quest Narrative” Reconsidered:

An Analysis of the Narratives of Fibromyalgia Patients Who Do Not Accept Their Illnesses

Abstract

“The quest narrative,” one of three types of illness narratives defined by A.W. Frank, is proposed as an ideal type. It requires the “acceptance” of illness and the ill person's belief that something new is to be gained through the experience. This moral narrative, as a “successful living narrative,” may devalue the narrative by people who do not accept illness as a failed way of living. It is difficult to see how people around an ill person and socioeconomic factors influence the process of accepting suffering and telling his/her experience, because individual efforts of the moral agents are emphasized.

The purpose of this study is to reconsider “acceptance” of illness as a requirement for “the quest narrative.” In this paper, I use the narratives of fibromyalgia patients who do not accept their illnesses. Through analysis of the narratives, I mainly obtain the following four insights. First, not only the ill person but also people around him/her could share the responsibility for the “acceptance” of their illnesses. Second, telling and listening to a “good story” could make one a normal ill person. Third, if people around the ill person do not accept his/her illness, the responsibility of “acceptance” of illness could be individualized. Finally, even if the ill person does not accept his/her illness, he/she could tell his/her story to share his/her experience with others.

These results suggest that “the quest narrative” should allow a variety of ways of “acceptance” of illness such as sharing or collaborating on it with others. Against the danger of listening to only “the good story,” the listener has to find the various “quest” in each illness narrative, and “the quest narratives” with rich variation should be brought up.