Structuring and destructuring the coarse of illness: the Alzheimer's disease experience

Abstract The course of illness is examined as a location for the assignment of developmental structure. Textual analysis and field data indicate that the stock of developmental codes for structuring the course of illness in the Alzheimer's disease experience is as varied as the manifold interests of those concerned. Structuring is practical and occasioned, realised in its variety in an 'ameliorative' mode of communicative usage. In the 'tribulation' mode, in contrast, the course of illness is destructured. A discussion of communicative usage, as a critique of developmentalism, follows.