The rhetoric of recovery and change.

How can we know whether people who have been treated for an illness or been helped with a problem have indeed regained their health or solved their problem? Is "health" an objective condition-something that is observable, visible, perhaps even measurable? This article discusses these questions with the help of an analysis of the account given by a patient in psychotherapy regarding her recovery from a problematic life situation. The point of departure here is that recovery from illness or from a condition of ill-health should be understood as a reorganization of cultural, social and psychological elements which together are able to convey the picture that treatment has been successful and full recovery has been achieved. What the patient presents is not a "report" on an "actual" transformation process, nor is it an accumulated description. Rather, the patient presents a narrative, shaped by and created out of her own life situation and the interview situation in which she is engaged. It is a narrative that highlights certain aspects of a course of events and which arranges the pieces of the puzzle in such a way as to convey a picture of transformation and recovery.