Using Michel Foucault's analysis of the types of power that make human beings subjects, the article considers the question of how a subject perceives himself as susceptible to being a subject-of-sickness. The body made into subject by sickness is a concrete expression of how a relation of power is established. In analyzing this configuration, the text characterizes both the externai conditions for self-perception as subject as well as the internai condi-tions, that is, how the subject sees himself. The social roots of self-perception as a subject lead to different discourses about and by the subject, which correspond to the strategies of particular systems (religious, medicine, and others). However, from the subjecfs point of view, the conditions are laid for perceiving oneself as a subject susceptible to being a subject-of-sickness, insofar as the subject sees himself, on the one hand, as being cared for by the State and, on the other, as caring for himself. From this point the text endeavors to show how 'becoming sick' (a generic term that encompasses three sequential forms: 'I am sick' [estou doente]; 'lama sick person' [sou doente]; 'I am a patient' [sou paciente]) transpires.