‘Stories’ of chronic fatigue syndrome: an exploratory discursive psychological analysis

This study sought to analyse how knowledge of the controversial illness, known among other names as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) or Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), is rhetorically constructed in the accounts of four sufferers. A discursive psychological approach was adopted, to analyse how sufferers of CFS use their discourse to actively represent notions of blame and accountability and their stake and interest, in situated illness narratives. The themes identified all serve to construct CFS as a legitimate organic illness. By constructing CFS in this way, the sufferers are able to position themselves as legitimately ill, and thus avoid the stigma and threats to their identities that being diagnosed as suffering from a psychological disorder could bring.