The ‘Career’ of People with Multiple Sclerosis: Three Key Moments. The Start of the Disease to the ‘Biographical Work’

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to understand how the concept of ‘career’ can be
applied to a specifi c chronic disease such as multiple sclerosis. This
research is focused on ‘careers’ as the term is used in Symbolic
Interactionism in Sociology. The qualitative research is based on thirty
semi-directed interviews, four group interviews with people suffering from
multiple sclerosis in French hospitals and associations, and twenty-three
observations made over a one-year period. Three stages in the ‘careers’
of the subjects showed the onset of the disease: the start of the
symptoms, the announcement of the diagnosis, which confi rms the entry
into the disease (and defi ned life before and after the disease), and the
preparation of the ‘biographical work’. Depending on how one lives and
enters into the ‘careers’ of the disease, such ‘careers’ will be more or less
complex and different, as will also be the forms of biographical paths.