Lecture 2 - Stories Flashcards
Entangled models of health from a humanities
perspective can authorize….
painful political cultural, moral
surveillance of our bodies, selves and communities.
Narratives of health and illness can be….
Collective, singular, culturally specific, need a ‘point’, and very powerful
Active process draws on personal and cultural resources
Narratives mediate between an inner world of…
and an outer world of…
thus they can…
thought/feeling
observable actions/state of affairs
provoke strong reactions that draw on cultural biases as much as support
Narratives are not
accidental
Narratives have
power & are familiar
Illness can make our
bodies strange to ourselves and retelling of stories helps us become familiar with this different ‘me’.
What is a core component of the healing process in psychiatry? (Kleinmann 1988)
Co-construction of a tenable account of illness between patient and HCP
Expert healers can fortify their clinical practice with…
Charon (2008)
narrative competence to recognize, absorb, metabolize, interpret, and be moved by the stories of illness
Arthur Frank (the wounded storyteller 1995)
Recognise value of narrative in biomedicine often comes from ‘wounded healers
Restitution Stories
plot line, associated with, peoples preferance
‘yesterday I was healthy but today I am sick but tomorrow I will be well again’
recently ill not chronically ill
(compelling as they’re true)
Most people prefer these stories
In biomedicine these stories what we ‘ought’ to tell about our illnesses.
Restitution stories continued
biomedicine emerges as
Biomedicine emerges as heroic and triumphant
Chaos Stories
plot line, illness, admired?, HCP
‘and then…. and then…. and then’
People consumed by their illness
characteristic story development
not admired
Most difficult to bear for HCP
(treatments pointless)
Chaos continued
compared to whirlpool
(stories belong to, Patients medical info, witnesses, whirlpool effect)
Stories belong to sufferer only
Patients can’t provide all medical information about their condition, as the self has become broken and is no longer coherent
Witnesses try to redirect them, to lead the teller onwards to an uplifting narrative, but whirlpool effect is stronger.
Quest Stories – Alcoholics Anonymous
plot line, how is self constructed, key characteristic of stories, suffering experience
Provides a departure date, initiation period, return
(like stages of a journey)
Self constructed heroically
Endurance and forbearance by the teller.
Suffering experience central to initial quest but learning integrity of suffering.
Quest Stories expressed in other artistic media
Beauty Out of Damage: self portrait by international haute couture model Matuschka
