Illness (n.) has two balancing causes in primitive pathology: loss of soul — a complex that should belong to the ego has gone — and possession by a spirit — one that should not has come.
Illness (n.) is not a meaningless burden but one's own self — the 'other' one always sought to exclude; the patient must learn not to get rid of it but to bear it.
Illness (n.) is a solution of sorts — 'now I can give up, now I am good and sick' — so the patient should be treated as a partner, not laid on a couch before a god dropping a word now and then.
Illness (n.) is always at the same time an unsuccessful attempt at a cure.
Illness (n.) is a purgatorial fire — and no one can be a doctor who cannot induce in the patient a way of seeing it that lets him recover, or at least endure.
Illness (n.) cannot simply be extracted like a foreign body, lest something meant for life be removed with it; its morbidity must be cultivated and transformed until it plays its part in the whole.
Illness (n.) is faulty adaptation — on two fronts: to the outer world, and to the vital demands of one's own nature; many fall ill not for failing the world but for failing to use their worldly success for their inner life.
Illness (n.) isolates; shown that his ailment is a general one, even a god's, the patient is in the company of men and gods, and that knowledge heals.