Making Sense of HIV Infection: Discourse and Adaptation to Life with a Long-Term HIV Positive Diagnosis

Abstract

This article is based on research conducted with a group of HIV positive individuals who had been living with the diagnosis for an average of nine years. Traumatic events such as serious illness can have a devastating impact on a person’s life, especially with regard to basic ‘existential’ dimensions such as time, meaning and sense of control. This means that one of the primary challenges for the individual learning to live with such an illness consists in the development of a coherent narrative or story which enables them to make sense of their experiences and explain its meaning and significance both to themselves and others. This article documents this process of discursive reconstruction among ‘long-term’ HIV positive individuals. In particular, three predominant discourses are identified: