Logics of Care of Psoriasis. A Compass for Dealing with Chronic Illness.

The main aim of this article is to document and define the logics of care of psoriasis, an inflammatory disease of the skin and/or joints. On the basis of in-depth interviews with 24 psoriasis sufferers, our study shows that the logics of care of psoriasis are part of a dynamic that links the severity and evolution of symptoms, individual aspirations and available resources; that these logics of care can be described in terms of five dimensions : their radius of action, their focus, their robustness, their plasticity and their self- or heterocentric orientation. This case study suggests an operational definition of logics of care as a type of learning - learning about learning (Bateson, 1977) - and a type of knowledge, in this case the meta-knowledge at the root of the organisation of experiential knowledge. Logics of care consist of a vision, an intuition or even a feeling that indicates a direction, an orientation in the ways of taking care of oneself, without necessarily spelling out the means of implementing them. They are the essential compass for navigating with chronic illness.