EN
The paper Women after a mastectomy in Poland. Private sphere, public sphere has developed the idea that the problem of women with breast cancer is not only their treatment, but a range of social and psychological processes that have an impact on their return to their working life. The organization Amazonki (“the Amazons”) plays an important role here. The objective of this paper is: the presentation of the experience of cancer within a private space in terms of treatment, psychology and sociology; the analysis of the passage of “cancer” from private sphere to public in a personal as well as an institutionalized dimension – the creation of Poland’s first cancer patients’ organization in 1987. This chapter Language barriers in talking about cancer discloses the origin of psychological – and also sociological – barriers in talking about cancer, as well as it explaines how this notion functions in language, i.e. decodes the meanings concealed behind that notion, both open and hidden, creating problems in usage. It is in language where the principle of denoting the world, expression and ritual takes place – it is possible to say in Wittgenstein’s words that the boundaries of language are the boundaries of our world.