Rapporti ISTISAN 09/49 ISTITUTO SUPERIORE DI SANITÀ Ageing ...

Rapporti ISTISAN 09/49
further specifications of a positive kind; b) a lifestyle; c) a condition of balance that is of a
suitable adaptation between individual and society. Diseases can be on the other hand intended
as: a) lack of health; b) escape from daily life; c) negation. In a later work Herzlich (Herzlich,
1991) sustains that, even the representations of health and illness have not undergone changes
over the last years, what has been developing is the conception of health as a kind of social
“rule” or of “moral imperative”. The value given to health has been increasing as well as a new
way of interpreting health as synonym of happiness and wellbeing, for which any individual
“must be well and recover his health”. Within the structure of social representations, subjective
representations of health have the function of mediating between the general system of
knowledge which includes cultural, social representations, and individual action (Flick, 1992).
The theory of social representations of health and illness has offered a great contribution to
social sciences. It has fostered the integration between the different subjects studying health and
has enriched the methodological and technical apparatus of research on health. Moreover the
theory of social representations has highlighted the differences in terms of representations,
between logic of daily life and institutional logic’s, users and health operators, patients and their
relatives, etc. (Petrillo, 1996).
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