Abstract: There is a distinct tendency within the field
of psychological and psychiatric literature to cite illness
memoirs as exemplary sources of insight into the
subjective dimension of how illness is experienced.
However, the epistemological reliability of such sources
remains open to question: Do such sources indeed offer
meaningful insights into the authentic experiences of
patients and in doing so, provide effective coping and
self-management strategies, or are they merely literary
and/or popular constructs, the value and meaning of
which are fundamentally indeterminate? In this contribution,
I analyze three such memoirs:
Floyd Skloot’s
(1996) The Night-side;
Rik Carlson’s (2004) We’re
Not in Kansas Anymore;
and Julie Rehmeyer’s (2017)
Through the Shadowlands
—all describing individual experiences
of the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome
(CFS). As CFS remains a puzzling and contested illness,
an analysis of these narratives offers the opportunity to
explore the presupposed values as well as the limitations
of illness life-writing. In this article, I map the academic
debate on the epistemological value of illness narratives
and chart the discussion on CFS since the early
1990s. Subsequently, I propose a double reading—a
“medical” reading and a “literary” reading—of the
memoirs considered. Finally, I suggest that the inherent
indeterminacy of CFS life-writing is an important quality
that contributes to a deeper understanding of living
and coping with chronic, as yet medically unexplained
illnesses. Reading illness memoirs, I conclude, reveals
the rhetorical and cultural dimensions, as well as the
ambiguities and uncertainties of such experiences.