Struggling for meaning: How HIV-positive gay men make sense of AIDS.

Abstract

For individuals living with HIV, AIDS presents an existential a well as medical crisis. HIV-positive gay men participated in intensive clinical interviews to discern how, if at all, they ascribed meaning to AIDS and their HIV infection. The study used phenomenological research methodology and was informed by the theoretical perspectives of assumptive world theory (Janoff-Bulman 1992) and humanist-existential psychology (Frankl 1959, Lifton 1980).