Dying To Be Ill: True Stories of Medical Deception

[摘要] By Marc D. Feldman, Gregory P. Yates. New York: Routledge. 298 pp. $33.00.Dying To Be Ill is a collaborative effort written by Dr. Marc D. Feldman and Gregory Yates about factitious disorder. Over the course of the text, the authors discuss how people afflicted with this condition “fabricate disease and illness to reap the rewards of the sick role” (p 8), which, by their definition, included support from others, exemption from social obligations, and special allowances. In the introduction of the book, the authors note that they hope Dying To Be Ill will do for factitious disorder what The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks did for neurologic conditions. They hope to convey the “lived experiences” of the people with this condition and others who are affected by it, whether a spouse, child, friend, religious leader, or caregiver. The book primarily relates information through discussion of multiple case studies, many of which are written by the people involved (e.g., the individual with the disorder, the grown childhood victim of Munchausen by proxy, the family member initially unaware of the deception). The strength of this style of presentation is that one can learn about the condition from the voices of those who experience it. The reader obtains a sense of how individuals engage in deception and, more importantly, potential insight into what the motivations are for these individuals or how the condition often progresses. A drawback to this approach, however, is that the anecdotes start to blend together and, as noted by Feldman and Yates in the introduction, “these cases don't make for easy reading” (p 6) given their graphic (e.g., intentionally injecting oneself with feces) and disturbing nature (e.g., a parent intentionally adding salt to infant formula or smothering a child to simulate illness).

[学科分类] 儿科学