“Sontag was, at that time, on a crusade against the military metaphor that pervades medicine. Her initial wrath was centered on the “War on Cancer,” of which she was a part, having been diagnosed with (and recovered from) the disease herself. But she felt the military mindset introduced unhelpful meanings into our attempt to cure what was simply an illness. “We are not being invaded,” she wrote. “The body is not a battlefield. The ill are neither unavoidable casualties nor the enemy.”...
Such mechanical imagery contrasts sharply with equally visual French metaphors, which Payer observes are rooted in the idea of the body as terrain, or the ground in which things grow. This notion evokes a vineyard, and French physicians tend to see illness as something that needs fertile ground in which to take root. As a result, much of French medicine is geared toward fortifying the terrain to make it more difficult for illness to thrive. In America, the terrain is carpet bombed.
Metaphors do not control our thoughts, but they can set boundaries around the way we think... For the last century our machine metaphor has been sufficient to deal with infectious diseases. But in other areas it is less useful. And in the realm of mental health, it is practically useless.”
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