Infertility experience: retrospective biographical reconstruction of now fertile women

This master's thesis focuses on the retrospective biographical interviews with three now fertile women who as narrators retrospectively create their identities during the experience with the diagnosis and treatment of infertility. I also explored how the medical and social institution could lead to a change of identity of female infertility. This master's thesis is based on theory of Erving Goffman about patients in total institution: this theory supports the idea that total (medical) institution destroys the patient's original identity and then constructs new identity. The major result of this master's thesis found four different changes in woman's identity during the experience of infertility: identity of implicitly fertile woman and potential mother, denial of identity and the process of accepting a new identity, identity of infertile woman and patient's identity, and mother's identity. The changes of woman's identity are based on diagnostic phase. Therefore I decided to separate them into four various period in this research: pre-diagnostic, diagnostic, post-diagnostic and contra-diagnostic. I also found a difference between Goffman's theory and my results: Based on my research I concluded that the construction of identity of infertile women in the diagnostics and treatment of infertility is..