This volume makes visible the complexities and ambiguities involved in giving and receiving diagnoses, and how they shape and are shaped by views on what is real and acceptable, and how people relate to the phenomena of illness.

Rolf Ahlzen, Martyn Evans, Raimo Puust

Preface. Narratives. Diagnosis - An introduction. Diagnosis - Telling and hearing. The dialogue of the clinical encounter. The double face of diagnosis. What do diagnoses mean and does it matter? Intimacy and distance in the clinical examination. The physician's understanding of the patient's bodily meaning. A diagnostic jungle? - Ambiguities in classification. Certainty.