Simon Sahner on medical diagnoses and their consequences  When Illness Becomes A Myth

Certain illnesses are surrounded by myths that suggest sufferers are personally responsible for their condition. Simon Sahner explores this phenomenon – and warns against the capacity of myths to obscure reality.

On 2 November 1976, the Swiss author Fritz Zorn died of cancer aged just 32. The following year, his autobiographical book Mars was published, in which he reflects on both his illness and what he saw as its causes. Another year later, American writer Susan Sontag published Illness as Metaphor. Given the timing, it seems unlikely Sontag was familiar with Zorn’s work – but her essay reads almost as though it were a response to his thoughts.

Misplaced Blame

Zorn saw his illness as the logical consequence of a life lived in denial. He attributed the malignant lymphoma that ultimately claimed his life to unexpressed and repressed emotions, as well as a lack of sexual fulfilment. In Mars, he went so far as to blame his affluent, bourgeois Zurich family, claiming they had systematically stifled all emotional expression and love.

At the time, Zorn was not alone in this belief – which, it must be said, is medically unfounded. Susan Sontag encountered similar thinking in the 1970s, when her own experience of cancer prompted her to examine the narratives that have long surrounded this and other diseases. In Illness as Metaphor, she focuses not only on cancer but also on tuberculosis, noting: “As once TB was thought to come from too much passion, afflicting the reckless and sensual, today many people believe that cancer is a disease of insufficient passion, afflicting those who are sexually repressed, inhibited, unspontaneous, incapable of expressing anger.”

Shame-Laden Diagnosis

According to Sontag, some illnesses are not merely medical events but also sources of myths. These myths become problematic when treated as explanations or believed to influence the course of the disease. A diagnosis, in this context, is often perceived not simply as a medical finding but as a reflection of the person. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, tuberculosis, in particular, was seen as a disease that primarily afflicted the sensitive, the refined and not least, the artistic. It was romanticised and became the subject of numerous paintings, poems and novels; Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain is one famous example.

If we believe the myth surrounding cancer, this disease consumes a person from within and gradually destroys them. For a long time, its cause was thought to stem – much as Zorn describes – from psychological repression and suppressed desires. Zorn was convinced it was a “mental illness”. This widespread belief explains why a cancer diagnosis remains, for many, a source of shame. Even in the late 20th century – in countries like France – the norm was that patients were not informed of their diagnosis, only their relatives. I experienced this myself in 2008, aged 19, when my doctor informed my mother of my diagnosis, not me.

Why Me?

When AIDS became an epidemic with the spread of HIV in the 1980s, the disease was quickly branded, in a homophobic turn, as a “pleasure plague”, supposedly affecting mainly homosexual men. Once again, the sick were held responsible for their condition – whether for being too sensitive to the world’s suffering, suppressing emotions or failing to conform to repressive sexual morality.

The power of these myths is so strong that even many of those who fall ill internalise them – Fritz Zorn being a stark example. Their appeal lies in offering seemingly logical explanations for situations that are otherwise difficult to accept or impossible to explain. Why me?

Obscuring Myths

It is, unfortunately, a misconception to think that these myths and narratives about illness belong to a distant, unenlightened past. Even today, many people suffering from the long-term effects of COVID-19, for example, must justify their condition, because some members of society – and even many medical professionals – still believe that their suffering, often specifically ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome), stems from a weak psyche or lack of willpower.

Language and storytelling are essential tools through which we make sense of the world – and when myths take hold, they can have real consequences. This is especially true when they give rise to myths and metaphors that distort our understanding of medical realities.

February 2026