Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, epilepsy has emerged as a dynamic vehicle through which the social construction of illness can be researched. However, in various ways these efforts have remained somewhat stagnant and have concentrated on specific themes of the experience, such as stigma. To "reenergize" the field, the author focuses on the stories of three individuals with an epilepsy and employs an analytic vocabulary derived from Gubrium and Holstein along with contemporary theoretical arguments concerning the construction of identity and meaning to concentrate on the divergent and peculiar nature of the epilepsy experience. Drawing its dynamics from the poststructuralist concept of difference, this article discusses and analyzes the fragmented and ensembled identities of the individual with an epilepsy. Last, the importance of future efforts in the cross-disciplinary study of the illness experience are highlighted and discussed.

Taking as its point of departure the set of categorised themes developed by Schneider and Conrad in Having Epilepsy: The Experience and Control of Illness, the article focuses analytic attention on the individual theorising that produces these themes-in-action. Utilising 'illness narratives' of individuals with an epilepsy, I suggest that in qualitative sociological investigations into the illness experience there has been a narrative detachment from the very artfulness that articulates these themes. While there certainly is an appreciation of the experiential categorisation that individuals do within their storytelling in this genre of research, it has nevertheless been underappreciated in a tendency to consolidate what is told into workable thematic categories. In essence, the difference of experience has been placed aside, in many ways dictating what is looked for in the analysis itself.