Communication as Part of the Lives of the Seriously Ill

10.33876/2311-0546/2024-4/318-330

Abstract

The article examines the problem of the role and meaning of communication in the world of seriously ill people, a topic of relevance for medical anthropology. The selected source material comprises autobiographical works that accurately reflect the features of the life of a sick person, including their mood and atmosphere. Memoirs and biographical literary works, which contain descriptions of real hospital everyday life, represent informants’ narratives and give the researcher the opportunity to “get involved” in the observation of the problem under study. The methodological basis of the study was the concept of S.N. Trubetskoy about the conciliar nature of man, which is manifested in the need to contact people and share one’s feelings and ideas. It was revealed that sick people are in dire need of communication. They value attention, equal opportunities, honesty, they barely understand negative attitudes towards themselves, deliberate infliction of emotional pain, but are ready to forgive awkward, thoughtless behavior. The disease makes them defenseless against negative contact. In situations of prolonged and severe pain, normal communication is disrupted; it sometimes becomes fragmentary, compressed, and forced. Communication is of ontological importance; the patient sees it as one of the main values of life, but the disease imposes restrictions on a person that prevent the emergence of his conciliar nature, the ability to contact other people, live and develop among people.