Abstract
A patient (Mr. A) who had been suffering from ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) for several years, told the story of his illness at a public health center where a public health nurse (Ms. B),who had heartily supported Mr. A, worked. The aim of this paper is to examine how Mr. A generated the story with Ms. B and how he reconstructed it thereafter. As a result, some characteristics of the social generation of an illness story were elucidated as follows: 1) The first plot to Mr. A's illness-story—one which was constructed through a collaboration with Ms. B— was composed of three parts, (1) his medical history with ALS, (2) a conversion in his attitude towards intimate others, resulting from a gradual decline in his QOL, and (3) a return to the writing of his life history, spurred by the introduction of a personal computer. 2) To tell of the intolerable pain he had endured, which it seemed was important to Mr. A, he interrupted the story line from his conversion to the expression of his gratitude unpredictably in the end. As Mr. A frankly pointed out, his was a sort of chaos story, or what might be called an "anti-story," which enabled him to reconstruct his original dominant-story. 3) Seven months later, Mr. A took the opportunity once again to tell the story of his illness at a training meeting. On this occasion, he included a new version of his private illness story which contained a story of his pain, together with a model story of the ALS patients' community.
