Les représentations sociales et individuelles du cancer du poumon

The diagnostic of lung cancer calls upon several dimensions. The first is the social representation of the disease, involving the imaginary aspect of the cancer. This is a social fear, with a magic and religious idea, and representing a plague we need to fight against. Besides, cancer is a stigmatisation factor for the patient, without any link with normal life, causing a great social isolation. The consequences are health reductionism, but also behavioural, or genetical and psychogenal reductionism (psychogenesis of cancer). The other dimension is symbolic, that is the representation made by the patient for this own disease. Cancer reflects to the patient this own fear, inherited from the social view of the disease, and strongly linked with shame, culpability and anxiety, leading to exclusion. Medical talk must take these representations in account, for the diagnostic announcement and the follow-up of the patient.