Winaver D, Slama L
Service d'oncologie et de sénologie, Hôpital Saint-Louis, Paris.
Contracept Fertil Sex. 1993 Apr;21(4):339-43.
The drama with the language is that "putting in words" creates an uncrossable chasm between the felt and the expressed. There are moments where the impossibility to communicate cuts the links between doctor and patient. And this often happens in a consultation after the breast cancer has been announced. The unspeakable then, stands between the two protagonists, as the spectral appearance of death. For the patients, the medical revelation then becomes an anathema. The doctor who says the word, becomes the one who overturns a destiny for ever. One knows from greek mythology that confronted to the tragic of his destiny, man hears the ineluctability of the oracle but cannot accepts it. It is the role of the psyche to divert the prophecy so as to have space for hope, for a project of live. To tell, not to tell, how to tell: there is no rule. The misunderstanding is inexorable: it sighs the discordance between the medical reality of the breast cancer, the subject desire and the implication of the doctor who is wedged between the one and the other.
