Angoisse : genèse d’un récit

Anguish: The Case History of a Dying Trajectory (1970) is an exemplification of the grounded theory approach already developed by the sociologists Anselm Strauss and Barney Glaser in Awareness of Dying (1965) and Time for Dying (1968). A work less commonly cited than the two earlier books, Anguish tells the story of the last two months in the life of Mrs. Abel, dying of cancer on a hospital ward between late autumn in 1963 and the first months of 1964. We take a particular interest in two aspects of the work: first as a document that offers precious details of a historical juncture characterised by medical practitioners and researchers thinking in a new way about the occurrence of death in hospitals. Secondly, we underline the methodological and ethical issues raised by the narrative of Anguish, in which Glaser and Strauss tell us Mrs. Abel’s story based on a series of interviews between Strauss and the two nurse researchers, Shizuko Fagerhaugh and Shirley Teale, who took care of her. The distance of Glaser and Strauss from the case, mediated through a ready-made theoretical apparatus, and the thoughtful interpretations of the two nurse researchers pose questions for social science researchers about how to approach anguish and dying as objects of observation and thought.