The princess, the monster and the hero

Abstract

Man employs symbols as readily as he breathes. He creates images which help him to grasp the truth. His imagination is as much a tool of perception as are his senses and his emotions. It is structured and rational; it remains coherent even as it expresses itself in sometimes obscure and roundabout ways. It feeds on reality. Cancer is not immune from this practice of symbolisation. It gives rise to collective images, myths and a language. This imaginary construct of cancer is classed as a collective representation and is often said to be archaic and accused of encouraging the taboos which are associated with the disease. However, it is rooted in the reality of the illness itself. What is imagined is not an irrational creation of the mind. With cancer we do not have fantasies, irrationality, collective consciousness and ignorance on one side, and reason, knowledge and truth on the other. The boundaries are porous. Science and the collective imagination each express truths about the disease, but they employ different languages to do so. An understanding of this language of the imagination in relation to cancer is equally useful to the doctors, the nurses and the psychologists of the cancer medicine team. It helps us to understand the patient and communicate with him better and it makes it easier to be close to him in his pathway through the disease. We should recall that every carer also possesses an imaginary world of cancer built up from his own history, culture, experience in life and daily practice. It behoves him to be conscious of it.